


Learning Curve

by RavensWing



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Anna knows what she wants, College AU, F/M, Kristoff is a mess, PTSD!Military!Kristoff, Sven is a stoner, Underage Drinking, and drug use, and see how that goes, and she is just waiting for Kristoff to figure it out too, are things, bed sharing, best friends make the best lovers, but the dummies take their time getting there, it has a happy ending, plantonic (?) cuddling, some day I am going to post the entire story in the tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-05 04:35:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10297628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RavensWing/pseuds/RavensWing
Summary: Kristoff had joined the military so that he could afford college but no one ever told him that his service may ruin his ability to enjoy college. He hated the whole of the student body for showing him just how truly different he was now. Especially that redhead who is somehow in all of his classes.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this 3-shot as part of a Kristanna Christmas exchange on tumblr. I am cross posting it here for archival purposes. Enjoy!

Freshman orientation was a noble thing, Kristoff supposed, on some level. It was a systematic attempt to assuage the nerves of a couple hundred eighteen-year-olds and those responsible for them as they entered the next phase of their life. The problem was he was not eighteen and though this was a new phase in his life - he felt two thousand years too old to participate. 

The problem was that the thick pack of papers he held in his hands with practiced stillness reminded him a little too much of enlistment papers. The Do’s and Dont’s of Arendelle University were casual guidelines after years of military service, but it was not so much the rules that bothered him so much as the crowd.

He had started in a seat in the back row, but as the room filled he had abdicated his chair and pressed to the back wall. His eyes stayed trained on the entrance slash exit no matter what his position even as he tried to push down the instinct to see each and every unknown as a potential hostile. Six months as a civilian had done very little to soften the overt mindset that had been drilled into him over two tours.

It was this exact predisposition that led him to notice her well before she noticed him.

She was in his chair - the one he had left - though she filled it much differently than he had. Roughly five foot two, one hundred ten pounds, Caucasian, redhead, unarmed - the mental tally of her appearance rattled off without his permission. She could have blended into the sea of other freshmen and their loved ones aside from her chosen seat and the person chosen to accompany her. 

The man sitting next to her was far too young to be a parent of any kind despite their shared red hair. The way he draped her arm around her shoulder and whispered into her ear and made her giggle bespoke intimacy though she looked too young, too fragile to understand the weight of such terms. 

She was unaccompanied otherwise, bracketed by this man and the empty space of the aisle, and he knew it was foolish to feel any kind of kinship to her because of her chosen seat and her lack of legal guardian because she did have someone while he had no one. That thought caused a strange tightening in his chest followed by sharp anger at such a feeling existing.

This was stupid.

He tore his gaze away from her and looked at the packet in his hands. He had figured out basic training with less instruction than this. He needed to be at this orientation about as much as a seagull needed driving lessons. So before the speaker even took the podium, Kristoff slipped out.

…..

The first day of class was a panic attack waiting to happen.

There were so many people moving in hurried clusters from building to building and there was not enough time or resources to determine if any of them were hostile. His Springfield clung to his hip beneath his shirt but it did not make him feel safe.

He had not felt safe in years.

This packaged sardine existence that was university life made the possibility of violence a literal equivalent to shooting fish in a barrel. Yet this university life was something he had always wanted, had literally fought and killed to have, but now he wondered why. To better himself? He was not sure he was worth it anymore.

In the crush of students moving from one class to the next he found himself walking off of the sidewalk in the grassy median between the two large byways. In some part of himself he knew he should attempt to stay the course or at least hang to the fringes, but the idea of being that close to a stranger - that vulnerable - left him uneasy. He’d rather be a clear target on the side where any assailant would ID themselves in an attempt to assault him rather than be another schmuck caught in the crossfire.

Not that anyone would try to hurt him.

Because this was Arendelle University. Good, safe, clean Arendelle University with their fat campus security officers making predictable sweeps of the campus to lull students into complacency, but that was the way it should be. He had fought for this to be the norm for others. He had been in active combat for longer than it would take him to get a degree in order for people to smash together between classes and for overweight, under qualified security staff to be the status quo.

He had done that, was glad he had done that, but there was a switch that had flipped inside of him during that time and he did not know how to flip it back. He could not even remember what it felt like to walk down a crowded path and not expect someone to want to kill you.

He did not know if he could remember.

So when he settled into his back row seat in the auditorium where his Psych 101 class would be this semester, he made sure he had clear visual of all entrances and exits with his back to the wall. For this reason he was the first to see her come in.

He was the first to see everyone come in, but no one else mattered except for her, this girl from orientation with her red braids hanging like streamers around her shoulders. This girl who, for whatever reason, came and sat right in front of him so he could see over her shoulder and catch glimpses of the curve of her cheek when she turned to speak to the girl sitting next to her at the long, shared desk.

He did not think she was pretty. He did not think her freckles were charming or endearing. He did not feel warmth or excitement at seeing her, but she caught his attention which was more than he could say of most things these days.

….

Kristoff did not believe in fate.

He never would.

But when the red-headed girl showed up not only in his Psych 101 class, but in his Chemistry and Lab course, and his Algebra II course, and his Early American History course - it struck him as odd. He was not sure what the odds were of two freshmen unintentionally having the exact same schedule of classes, but based off the fact that none of his other classmates repeated themselves more than once he figured it had to be pretty low.

Still he did not believe in fate, or chance, or destiny, or karma, or kismet, or whatever you wanted to call it. He also did not believe in coincidence. Time in service had bled all of that out of his, so while he did not believe some unseen force of the universe had placed him in the exact same classes as a particularly distracting redhead he knew better than to just write it off as nothing.

…..

He lived two blocks east of campus and three blocks west from where the VA had found a part time job for him.

His apartment was one room, small, but he could see all points of entry from where he had the futon situated in the corner and that was what he preferred. It was just him, after all, and the price was right.

A small box set TV rested on an equally small bookshelf which housed his textbooks, his three chipped, mismatched place settings, and the full, unopened, box set of Scrubs that he had found in the apartment when he had moved in. A portable clothing rack held his small wardrobe alongside his futon and also served to hide the bathroom door that he had removed from its hinges upon first moving in.

It was a neat space, efficient. He would not go so far as to say he liked it, but he had stayed in much worse conditions so he would never complain. He would also not ever call this place a home. It did not feel that way. He was not sure if he would recognize the feeling of home ever again, but it kept him warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and dry in the rain and there were so many that had less than that so he would not complain.

Still, he did buy himself a small succulent to try and make the place feel a little less bleak. He named it Bruce and kept it on top of his gun safe.

…..

Her name was Anna Belle. He saw her write her name in class the first day and almost snickered.

What a ridiculous name.

Her parents must not have been from around here. Why else would they name their child something that rhymed with the city where they lived?

Anna Belle.

Arendelle.

Okay. So maybe he snickered just a little.

….

It was 10:03AM on the first Friday of the fall semester. He was in what he now considered his usual seat in the back of his Psych 101 auditorium. Anna Belle was also in her usual seat in front of him, slightly to his right. The TA was handing out pop quizzes about the syllabus and Kristoff was watching Anna Belle doodle goslings in the margins of her notebook when a loud bang shot through the room.

Reflex took over.

He dove under the large table style desk and reached for his Springfield .45 where it lived strapped to his side beneath his t-shirt. He looked up and saw wide, brown eyes of his desk neighbor peering down at him with confusion.

“You all right, bro?” He asked,  but Kristoff could hardly hear him about the blood screaming through his ears, but the constancy of his gaze was a lifeline that kept him from drawing his weapon.

His desk neighbor was not afraid.

If there was danger, he would be afraid.

That realization cut through his raging instinct just enough for Kristoff to register that there were no other sounds of conflict, no sounds of struggle or brutality. No one was screaming. No one was running. The only noises he heard above his own pulse and breath was the shifting of bodies in seats and the shuffling of papers.

“Bro?” It was the brown-eyed student again. He had a silver hoop hanging from the center of his nose and he was fine. Everyone was fine. Of course they were. This was Arendelle University, not a war zone.

Kristoff uncurled his fingers from the handle of his gun, keeping it holstered. He licked his lips and tasted sweat. His limbs shook with unused adrenaline.

“Everything okay up here, son?” Another voice came from the aisle side and Kristoff whipped his head towards it.

It was the elderly, bespectacled professor. He stooped to look under the desk where Kristoff pressed and curled as far into the corner as he could. Kristoff barely heard him over his own harsh breath. The professor, however, was breathing normally. The professor was fine.

His desk neighbor was fine.

Everyone was fine.

He was fine - or at least he would be fine once he got his body to understand it was not in immediate danger.

Kristoff choked on a mouthful of nothing.

“Dropped my pencil.” He managed around the knot in his throat.

There was no pencil anywhere around him. He knew that, his professor knew that, hell even his desk neighbor knew that - but he said it any way. He’d say it again and again until it was true and he could forget this happened. He wanted to forget everything that had ever happened, but he knew that was more than just wishful thinking.

With all of his strength, he pushed himself out of his hiding place to take his seat once more. One hundred pairs of eyes were on him - everyone in the class except for the TA who was still collecting the scattered stack of pop quizzes she had dropped. His fists clenched. There had never been a gunshot. He knew that now, but somehow it was worse that all it had taken to reduce him to quivering pile of reflexes he wished he didn’t have was a twenty-year-old dropping a stack of paper.

He grabbed at the pencil sitting on the desk in front of him.

“Nevermind. Found it.” He said to the professor who looked at him with a level of knowing that was unsettling as the events leading up to it. He was ripping his psyche to shreds, no doubt, and having a hayday with it.

The only mercy in the moment came when the professor turned and walked back down the stairs taking the prying eyes with him. He chanced a glance down at Anna Belle in the moment to find her watching him with an inscrutable gaze and he wished he could hide back under his desk forever. She was - no doubt - cataloguing away this incident so she could use it for whatever nefarious purpose had landed her in each of his classes this semester. She was picking apart his every weakness, his every flaw, until she had the perfect opportunity to strike - and holy shit what was wrong with him?

His brown-eyed desk neighbor leaned over.

“You trippin’, bro?”

He looked to his left and saw the glint of fluorescent lights off of the silver nose ring. Kristoff’s hands still shook and he swore he could still feel Anna Belle staring at him - picking him apart - and he tried to focus past that.

So under his breath, with a shake of his head, Kristoff replied: “Yeah. Probably.”

….

He did not cut any classes that day even though his nerves felt like someone had doused them with lighter fluid and tossed a match on them. He had joined the military so that he could afford college. No one had ever told him that the military may also ruin the chance of him being able to function while actually in college.

He walked the grassy median between classes, trying very hard to not notice the flashes of Anna Belle’s hair walking the exact same trajectory as he was, and he hated her and every student able to walk the crowded sidewalk without a care. He hated each student who picked out a seat in a classroom without thought of exit points. He hated the whole of the student body for showing him just how truly different he was now.

By the time his classes were done for the day he was exhausted. He’d felt Anna Belle’s knowing gaze follow him from class to class like she was just waiting for him to freak out again. Not that he blamed her. He was kind of waiting for the same thing, but he did not appreciate her waiting for it too.

So by the time he made it to the small apartment where he lived he could barely stand. He fell face-down on his futon and was asleep in an instant.

…..

The overly bright screen of his phone told him that it was 1:33AM and he was certain that incorrect. There was no way he had slept for ten hours straight. No way.

Except that he had and now he was wide awake in the middle of the night with no intention of diving into the abyss of marathoning Scrubs. So he changed into sweats, laced up his sneakers, and decided to go blow off some steam.

The idea of a middle of the night run took him back to some less than pleasant memories of basic training and after, but he pushed that aside. He was choosing to take this run. No one chose it for him. Those other runs had always hovered somewhere between conscious and awake. Now he was capital A Awake. His entire body hummed with energy and he focused on that while he propelled himself down distances marked by street lamps.

He looped the campus, the neighborhoods surrounding it, ran by his work twice, but never felt the drag of fatigue. So he pushed harder. He’d already clocked four miles when he decided he would run in one direction until he was tired then and only then would he turn back around and run to his apartment.

Yeah.

That would show himself to take a ten hour nap in the middle of the day.

That’d show him good.

The city of Arendelle was a seaside community despite the university being three miles inland. So when he finally felt the first sea breeze hit his face he could not help but feel the energy of the ocean in his blood.

It felt good.

Not many things felt like much of anything anymore, especially not positive things, but this did. This felt good and he’d chase that.

He turned to take his run down the deserted coastal pathway. The wide path was normally littered with open air storefronts, street performers, and tourists. Now, in the dead of night, it was abandoned. The only sound was the pounding of his feet and the surf echoing his heartbeat. The ocean kept time for him and set his pace.

He was near his ninth mile when he caught sight of her.

At first he was certain his eyes were playing tricks on him.

No one would be out here at almost three in the morning. Well. At least no one besides him, but there she was.

Her skin was so pale it almost glowed beneath the street lamps, acting like a beacon in the dark. Her red hair swam in tangled waves around her bare shoulders. He looked around to see if he could find a companion walking with her, but there was no one. She was alone which was dangerous and stupid.

He did not know what the proper thing to do in this situation would be. His paranoia told him that this was no coincidence and that she had known he would be here tonight, but how could she have known when even he had not? And besides, even if she had, what threat could she possible pose him? He could knock her over with a strong breath.

Ten yards out, he slowed his face to a halt and got a good look at her. Jeans like a second skin, a sleeveless blouse as thin as a spider’s web, and high-heels that accounted for her hobbled steps. And even at this distance, he could tell she was drunk as a skunk.

She did not seem to notice him until she was about five yards away. She stopped, swayed, and blinked in his direction.

“Hey!” She was loud, so much louder than he expected a person of her stature to be. “I know you.” Her consonant slide into her vowels. “You’re the guy who freaked out in class about his pencil.” She pointed a finger in his direction and wobbled two steps towards him. “Why does anyone freak out about a pencil?” She kept approaching him but his feet stayed glued to the path. “Is it lucky or something?”

He was going to tell her that he had absolutely not freaked out even though he totally had and that there was no such thing as luck but she kept on rambling.

“Is that why you’re out here? You’re looking for your lucky pencil? Are you going to freak out again? Are you freaking out now?” She was close enough now that she tried to poke him in his chest, but missed and stumbled towards him.

He caught her shoulders in his hands.

The weight and warmth of her sent a shock wave through his entire system. When was the last time he had touched another human? Moreover when was the last time that it had mattered? Not that this matter, but still.

He blamed his runner’s high for his heightened reaction.

“What are you doing out here?” He blasted past her pencil talk to questions of his own.

She leaned into his grip, seeming to crave the stability. “My boyfriend threw _another_ party and I got bored so I left, okay?”

Her tone changed markedly for the worse at the mention of her boyfriend. Kristoff’s mind flashed to the redhead man she had been with at orientation a week ago and made the connection.

“Where’s your boyfriend now?” He asked in code to see if she was alone as she seemed.

“Back there.” She jerked her head backwards. “With all the other drunk jerkfaces.”

“How far back?”

“You wanna know the address? Cuz I know it.”

“Sure.”

“1323 Wayfair Way.” She hiccuped. “Happy?”

That address was nearly a four mile trek from where they stood, so no. Happy was not the word that struck him immediately. The sensation was more closer to staggering disbelief. Four miles in those high heels she teetered on so precariously now was a special form of torture.

“Where are you going now?” He let go of her shoulders and she swayed towards him again. His hands resumed their position to keep her upright and at a sane distance.

“Home.” She blinked up at him, wide eyes glassy. “Well. Campus, I guess.”

That was three miles in the other direction. He had just run it, logging the distance mentally, and there was no way she was making it the rest of the way in those heels. Hell. He doubted her ability to finish out the trek stone cold sober and in sneakers. If the rest of her was as fragile as her shoulders felt in his hands - he doubted it very much.

“Where’s your phone?” He asked and she screwed up her face.

“Are you asking for my number? Because I already have a boyfriend. At least - I think I do. He’s going to be pretty mad I left another party.” She rambled. He only half tried to keep up.

“No. I’m calling you a cab. You aren’t walking anywhere.” He looked over her again to see if she carried a purse, a bag, anything - but came up fruitless.

“I left it at the party. Don’t want him calling me.” She stumbled out of his grip and almost tripped. “Don’t want anybody calling me anything. I can handle myself.”

She started her pained, hobbled walk in the direction of campus and he was tempted to let her go her own way. He did not owe her a damn thing and if she was stupid enough to want to try to walk seven miles alone, three sheets to the wind, in the middle of the night with absolutely no form of protection whatsoever it was totally not his problem. He looked away from her back towards the direction where he wanted to be running away from her and he almost did. Almost.

But then he looked back over his shoulder and saw her stumble step after painful step and he knew he could not leave it at this.

He could not go to class for the rest of the semester with Anna Belle’s seat empty in front of him because she got murdered between here and campus all because he wanted to keep running. He groaned.

Why was this complete stranger so hell bent on ruining his life?

“Hold on!” He called and jogged to catch up with her.

She whirled which was never a good idea when drunk in heels and he barely kept her from careening to the ground by catching her arm in his hand.

“Oh. It’s _you_.” She giggled and the sound of her laugh sent a chill down his spine.

“Yeah. It’s me. We’re going to get you home before you get yourself killed or worse.” He stooped and tried to scoop her up in his arms, but she drunkenly dodged him.

“What are you doing?”

“You cannot walk anymore in those stupid shoes. I’m carrying you.” He bent again in attempts to sweep her up in his arms, and again she stumbled just enough to evade him.

“What? No. My parents warned me about strangers and _you_ are a _stranger_.”

She was all sass, but he did not care. The sooner they got back to campus the sooner she was no longer his problem and that moment could not come soon enough.

“Fine. You want a piggy back ride instead?” He was half joking but her eyes lit up at the proposition.

“Are you serious?”

He did not have time to answer before she scurried behind him and tried to climb him like a tree, stranger talk clearly forgotten.

“Whoa there, feisty pants.” He ducked down, reached back, and caught her slim thighs in firm hands to hoist her onto his back.

She was small. He knew that. But what he had not known was that he had carried backpacks heavier than she was by some measure. He had scaled mountains with supply packs more awkward than she was in all of her drunken glory. He’d hauled injured comrades twice her size away from combat. Yet the weight of her pressed against him, wrapped around him, took his breath for a moment.

She settled against his back. Her arms encircled his neck. Her legs were like a vice around his hips. She held him so tightly it was as if she was trying to attach herself permanently.

He heard and felt her sigh.

“I haven’t had one of these since I was little.” She pressed her cheek to the back of his sweaty shirt and sighed again. “Everything was so simple when we were little. Right? Like - what happened to that? Why did we let it go?”

He was used to drunken philosophers, but he was not used to them being a woman plastered to his back. Her warmth seeped into his skin. He could smell the waft of hairspray, gin, and honeysuckle. His mom had a honeysuckle bush, but it had been a long time since he had seen it - or her.

A twinge of guilt twisted his stomach.

“Things change.” He started a brisk pace, hoping that if he jostled her a bit she would lose her death grip. “Let’s get you home.”

….

The dorms at Arendelle University required residence to swipe a keycard in order to get inside.

Anna Belle’s key card was seven miles back at a party and it is all Kristoff could do to not just let her sleep on the stoop. The three miles back to campus had been torture enough. His body, so conditioned against its own needs, had come alive against her constant contact. A part of him he had considered long dead stirred with new life and he could not be more horrified. His only comfort in those long three miles had been that he would be rid of her soon and that she was probably too drunk to remember any of it. He had not considered that this may not be the end of the road.

“We can go to campus security. They can look you up in the student database and let you in.” He had read that in the orientation packet.

“No, no, no, no, no, no…” she pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes and plopped down on the dormitory steps. “They will know I have been drinking and they can’t know that cuz I can’t be drunk yet. I’ll get kicked out of school or something and then my sister - oh! Oh no! My sister is going to murder me.”

Kristoff was not certain what Anna Belle’s sister had to do with any of this, but she did have a point. Arendelle University was a dry campus and he had not even considered the fact that she was well under legal drinking age. While he was not sure expulsion was on the table, there would be very real consequences if The Powers That Be found her wasted on campus.

“We could call your boyfriend. There’s phones on campus we could use and -”

“No. No we cannot call my boyfriend.” She gave a pinched laugh. “Not that he would help anyway. He’s such a jerk when he drinks.” She looked up at him from where she sat, eyes wide and watery. “Are you a jerk when you drink?”

He did not know how to answer that, was not ready for the weepy hysterical part of this evening to start. Plus Anna Belle was starting to look a little green around the gills and he knew he needed to get her off campus before a security patrol circled around to find her vomiting on a sidewalk with him alongside her.

“All right you.” He put his hands under her armpits and lifted her to her feet with little effort. “If you aren’t going to let me call anyone then you’re going to have to come with me.”

He walked down the steps and paused in front of her.  She slumped onto his back without further prompting, his hands catching her thighs once more, and her cheek finding its place against his back.

She sighed, a familiar feeling now, and that thing stirred in his gut.

“Where are we going?” He could barely make out her mumbled words.

“Somewhere you can sleep this off.”

She muttered something unintelligible and the burrowed closer against him. He gritted his teeth.

Somehow two blocks felt an awful lot longer than it actually was.

….

He managed to unlock his apartment door with her still attached to his back. She’d been muttering things under her breath the entire time he walked them to his small apartment but he had not tried to make out any of them. She was at the point in her drunken journey that the buzz was fading into shakey sadness. He knew that place well.

He needed to get her some water, some food, and some sleep immediately before she dissolved further.

They got inside and he could not put her down quickly enough. She swayed at the rough dismount, her face taking the pale, piqued shade of impending sickness. He steered her to the bathroom and she seemed to know what to do from there. She sank to her knees and heaved into the open toilet bowl.

Her tiny shoulder shook with each wretch. She looked so small, so fragile, kneeling on his bathroom floor. He was not well equipped in the art of drunk comfort, but he joined her on the cramped floor and pulled her hair back over her shoulders. It was sticky with hairspray. He had the fleeting thought of what her hair would feel like unsaturated with styling product, but he dismissed that. That thought was literally the bottom of what he needed to be thinking about right now with this petite hurricane in his living space.

She stayed over the bowl for several minutes after the purging had ceased. He relaxed his grip on her hair and awkwardly patted her back. It was better this way, he knew. Throwing the stuff up out of her system was far better than letting it work its way through and in turn would be much easier for him to get her out of his apartment in the morning.

Finally she slumped back so her spine pressed into the wall behind her. Her hand cupped her forehead and she choked on a breath. He closed the lid and flushed. Standing he took his cup from the sink, filled it with water, and offered it to her. She took it with shaking hands.

“You may want to rinse and spit.” He said before she put the cup to her lips and she nodded. She tried to press up to stand, but with the cup, her choice of footwear, and her condition it was a difficult task. Her grabbed her elbow to steady her and led her to the sink. She rinsed, spit, and repeated four times. Water splashed the front of her already thin blouse making it transparent. The hunger stirred in him again and he looked away. The only reason he was feeling this way was because of years of deprivation. He knew better than to associate physical need with actual affection.

He reached past her into the medicine cabinet and pulled out a bottle of mouthwash.

“Here.” He poured her a cap full. “So your teeth don’t rot.”

She took it and swished and spit just the same as she had with the glass of water before and then just stood there. Her small hands gripped the edges of the pedestal sink for dear life. Her breaths came in shaky gulps.

He hovered awkwardly, uncertain if she was going to vomit again or start sobbing, and wondering just how in the hell he got exactly here in the first place.

She pulled her feet out of her heels one at a time, shrinking five inches with a hiss. He looked down. Her little toes and the skin of her heels are worn raw and blistered. He’d had blisters like that before and he felt her pain for only one instant before he reminded himself that if she had not been so insistent on walking miles in those impractical shoes she never would have been in this position and neither would he.

 _She really must have wanted to leave that party_. The thought popped into his head - unwelcome - and he shoved it aside.

“Hey. Come over here. We’ll get you cleaned up.”

He took her elbow again, gently - so gently, and steered her shaking form over to his futon. She sat on a shaking exhale. The still-made covers pulled towards her. It was strange feeling to see her sitting there. He had not had company in the six months he had held this apartment for a lot of reasons, but mostly because no one he would call a friend knew he was back in the country.

He did not want to dwell on that though, she he went back to the bathroom to fetch his first aid kit. It was a heavy-duty one from the field, complete with suture kits, scalpels, and a collapsible stretcher, but thankfully she wouldn’t require any of the more intense medical cares he could provide. He set the case by her feet and opened it up.

He felt her eyes on him, but he did not look up. Instead he picked up one of her feet and rested it on his thigh. She had slender feet with short, curled toes painted the with chipped, pink polish that he may have found endearing in another life. He took out a sanitizing cotton swab and ripped the packaging open.

“This is going to sting.” Was the only warning he gave her before he swiped it across the torn skin of her pinkie toe. 

She shouted, and not in a dainty restrained way. She _howled_ and he lurched back.

“That _hurt_!” 

“Sorry!” Her eyes were dry with pain and it drew the apology from him like venom from a wound. “I warned you.”

“It still _hurt_.” She repeated. “Just because you know its gonna hurt doesn’t mean it hurts less.” 

He was struck by that, but he had no ability to say why. So instead he muttered another apology and pulled out a tube of antiseptic instead. He smeared clear paste over the her afflicted skin before covering it with gauze and medical tape. When he completed one foot he went to the other and kept the sanitizing swab far away. 

The moment her feet were bandaged he pulled back with trash in one hand and his kit in the other. 

“You need sleep.” He took two steps, three - four - five, back from where she sat so delicate and bewildered on his bed. 

“Everything is spinning.” 

“Take deep breaths.” He coached. “And find someplace to focus your gaze.” 

He took his first aid kit back to his bathroom before making quick work refilling the glass from the sink and bringing it to her.

“Drink this.” He handed her the glass, trying not care when her fingers brushed his, and went to his mini-fridge.

There were not many options there, but he had some bread, cold cuts, and an apple. He pulled them out, sliced the apple, and retrieved one of his three plates. He placed the sliced apple, deli meat, and bread on the plate and brought them over to her. 

“Eat this.” He balanced the plate on her knees and she laughed.

“Drink this.” She deepened her voice. “Eat this.” She laughed a sad, short laugh. “It’s like I’m in Alice in Wonderland.” 

He had no commentary for her storybook reality. The sooner she was asleep the sooner he could relax. Maybe. Or maybe like the rest of this evening it would become his newest, most exquisite form of torture.

She brought and apple slice to her mouth and sucked.

He looked away.

“You’re being really nice to me.” She said, but he didn’t look back at her.

Instead he looked around for something, anything, to do other than look at her. He landed on watering Bruce.

“No I’m not.”

“Yes you are.”

“No. I’m just keeping you out of trouble since you seem incapable of doing so yourself.”  He picked up the plant and headed towards the bathroom sink.

“But you didn’t have to. You could have left me behind.”

She was talking nonsense. He knew better than to try to reason with a drunk semi-stranger, so he turned his tap on to a drip and counted the drops as they landed on Bruce.

“You could have.” She said again, talking as she ate. “But you didn’t and you carried me and fixed my feet and gave me your food and that is something nice people do. That is why I think you are nice.”

Ten, eleven, twelve….

“You probably didn’t even know that apples are like my favorite food. So is bread. You gave me both which is a nice thing to do.”

Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one….

“Some people say they are nice but they never do nice things. You are the backwards of that which is better.”

Twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight….

“Hey! Do you want some of this?”

He cut the tap and looked back at her. She was holding the plate towards him from where she sat and it blocked her face. On it sat two slices of apple and a half eaten piece of bread. He grabbed Bruce.

“I’m good. Thanks.” He was actually starving. Between missing dinner and his impromptu cross-city trek he had worked up quite an appetite but he was not going to eat her food.

He set Bruce back on the gun safe at the foot of his futon and looked at her. Her eyes were sagging. Her limbs hung at her sides. She must have already forgotten her offer of food because she was munching on the second half of her bread slice now.

He grabbed the small trash can from his kitchenette and brought it over by the bed. He set it down by her knees and she looked up at him with glassy eyes like he meant something to her and that made him uncomfortable. This whole thing made him uncomfortable, but especially that.

“You should get some sleep.” He said and pointed at the trash can. “If you need to puke again, do it in there. Not on the floor.”

She followed the direction of his point and nodded obediently.

He bent to take the plate off of her knees when she grabbed his wrists. Her tiny fingers barely wrapped their width but her grip was surprisingly strong. The unexpected touch sent his heart to his throat. Surprises were not his forte. He thought to pull away but did not want to upset her. So he stayed still, stooped over, hands on the plate, eyes on the two remaining apple slices.

“Hey.” She was whispering now which made no sense since they were the only two in the room. “Hey - you.” She whispered still and this time he craned his neck back to look at her face.

She was so close at this angle that he could see bread crumbs stuck in the corners of her lips. He could see the smallest and faintest freckles over the bridge of her nose where her makeup had worn off. He could see the green ring around her pupils in the center of blue eyes. 

“Yeah?” He whispered too, but didn’t realize until it was too late.

“What’s your name?”

The question struck him as so odd because he had known her name for days, had laughed about it even. In his mind it had made sense somehow that she would know his name as well, but that was not the case. Of course it wasn’t. He was stupid to think it was even for an instant.

“Kristoff.” He spoke full voice this time.

“Christopher.” She still whispered.

“No. Just Kristoff.”

She nodded as if she always knew that.

“Kristoff?” She met his gaze with unblinking solemnity.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for being you.”

With that she leaned up, leveraging herself against her grip on his wrists, and kissed him. 

Well - she kind of kissed him. Her mouth, sticky from apple slices, landed halfway on his cheek and halfway on his mouth. It could have been a mistake, a sloppy drunken slip, for her mouth to land on his at all - but he could not be sure. Regardless the sensation alone was enough to send him running out the door again. Electricity shot through him and he had to force himself to stay completely still as she pulled back and let go of his wrists.

She grabbed the apple slices, one in each hand, and began to eat them as if her world had not just completely shifted. It took him a moment before he could command enough brain power to stand and take the plate to the kitchen sink on stiff legs.

Anna Belle held no special charm for him. Plus she had a boyfriend and she was nowhere near worth that kind of trouble. His physical reaction to her half-kiss was deprivation partnered with serious unused adrenaline, he told himself.

He kept those thoughts going until she fell asleep ten minutes later.

Then he redoubled them.

…..

Kristoff did not believe in fate or coincidence or any of that crap that indoctrinated the gullible consciousnesses that had never seen true injustice. He didn’t believe it at all, but as his eyes adjusted to the dark he could just barely make out the curve of her cheek, the slip of her shoulder in the shadows he felt something move. He could almost hear her breathing from where he secured himself with his back against the door, absolutely nowhere near her, not wanting to be any closer to her.

And no. You would never convince him that destiny or anything of the ilk brought this girl to his apartment but by the honor that bound him to fight he’d be damned if he did not spend the rest of the night trying to sort out just exactly how it happened.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I call this chapter "Find the Tropes". I am 0% ashamed.

He needed a shower. He needed to eat. He needed to be at work in a little under an hour. Before any of those things could happen, however, he needed Anna Belle to wake up and get out of his apartment. That, however, did not seem to be happening in this century.

Light had been streaming in through his single window, hitting her face without remorse, for about an hour and she had not so much as fidgeted. He had to give it to her. She was a sound sleeper.

Somewhere in the five hours he had kept vigil over her sleeping form he had slid from standing at the door, to leaning against it, to sitting in front of it. He lost feeling from the waist down from not moving for so long, but he did not trust himself to move. He did not trust what he would do with her laying there, fragile and vulnerable, because no matter what she said - he was not nice.

Nice people did not have blood on their hands.

He did.

He was not nice.

His knees were folded up to his chest, elbows resting upon them, and he scrubbed his hands over his face. He knew just how he got into this situation, but he did not know how he got out of it. He needed to get out of it though. He needed to so badly he felt it ache in his chest, but he could not move.

The sane thing would be be wake her, explain the situation, and wash his hands of it. He was, however, increasingly aware of the fact that he was not sane. He could not go over and shake her shoulder where she lay curled beneath his covers because he did not trust himself to touch her ever again. He could break her into a thousand pieces without breaking a sweat. He could rip her to shreds like a paper doll and burn the evidence.

He’d done worse on orders.

He was capable and she was clueless. That was a dangerous combination.

Thirty minutes before he was supposed to clock-in she turned onto her back with a groan. The motion made him jump to his feet, but his the numbness in his lower extremities made him need to brace himself against the door again for balance.

She cracked open her eyes.

Sweat broke out on his hairline, down his spine, and maybe it was a good thing he had not showered yet.

She blinked and looked around the room before her gaze settled on him. He wished he could turn invisible.

He could build bomb shelters out of blown out humvees but he could not meet the eyes of an eighteen-year-old.

This was just great.

She sat up when she saw him, grabbing her head with a moan. “Wh - where am I?”

Her voice cracked, low and raspy for dehydration. He knew the drill. Her cup sat on the ground by the trash-can-cum-potential-vomit-receptacle empty and he should get her more water. He should and he should get her Aspirin and another apple, but his feet stay nailed to the floor.

“My place.” His voice sounded funny, pinched, in his ears. “I found you last night and brought you here.”

He winced inwardly at his wording. He made her sound like a stray he had picked up out of the goodness of his heart and his knew his fair share about picking up strays.

“You’re the pencil guy.” She pulled her tangled flame of hair back from her face. “Christopher.”

“Kristoff.” He did not remind her they had already had this conversation, honestly too thankful for any part he did not have to explain to be too picky.

“Kristoff. Right.” She swung her feet off the futon and onto the floor. She looked at them and pointed. “You did this.”

The bandages had stayed through the night. The white tape and gauze were even whiter than her pale skin.

“Yeah.” He swallowed at the memory. “I did that.”

She stared at her feet for awhile and he stood there. He didn’t know what else to do, what else he trusted himself to do. Her head turned in his direction, but she did not quite look at him. Her eyes scrunched up.

“Did we - uh - did we - you know?” Pink and red exploded up her neck, over her jaw, cheeks, all the way up to her forehead.

He felt a similar heat prickle the tips of his ears. “ _No_.”

It was too adamant, too quick, perhaps because her following expression was as hurt as it was relieved.

“Okay. Okay. Cuz I’ve never - I mean - I’ve never just hooked up with someone. And I have a boyfriend.” At the mention of her significant other a new wave of realization swept over her. “Oh. Oh no. Where’s my phone - my purse?”

She’d been so proud of the fact that it had stayed behind the night before. “You left it at the party.”

“Shoot. _Shoot_.”

He liked the way she didn’t swear even though it was pretty clear that she wanted to, but he kept that to himself.

She pushed up to stand and winced with the effort. She looked at her feet again.

“Where are my shoes?”

He looked around. He hadn’t considered… “In the bathroom.”

She looked at the space around her, taking it in for what seemed to be the first time. “Where’s the door?”

He pointed behind the rack clothes where he had removed both the bathroom and closet doors. “There.”

“Why?”

There was no true, short answer for that. So he lied. “It broke.”

She nodded. “What if I need to…”

She didn’t need to finish. “I’ll wait outside.”

It took him all of two seconds to get to the other side of the door and collapse against it. What in the world had he gotten himself into? She was alone in his apartment now. No one had ever been alone in his apartment except for him - and Bruce - but Bruce did not really count. Now she was in it and alone and he needed to get to work and this had better not take too long because he was really starting to lose his -

She knocked from the inside.

“I’m done.” Was all she said and he counted to three before he cracked the door open and stepped back inside.

She was there in the middle of the his space, shoes in hand, rumpled and glowing in the light of the sun from behind her. The crazed mess of her hair made caught a halo of sunbeams around her face. The sting of her kiss still bit at the corner of his mouth and he wondered what it would be like to have someone like her stand in the center of his apartment and actually be his.

“Could I - uh - sorry I know I’ve already asked a lot but could I borrow your phone?”

He wanted to ask who she would call. He wanted to know if it was her boyfriend. He wanted to make sure she was taken care of. He didn’t.

“Sure.” It was where he had left it the night before with his wallet on his counter. He retrieved it and handed it to her. “I’m going to shower really quick so if you want to take the call in the hall, you can just leave the phone outside by the door.”

He thought it would be easier this way, no real goodbye, she would just leave the same unscripted, ghostly way she had come into his existence. It was best for everyone. Or at least it was the best for him.

“Yeah. Of course.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

Neither of them moved, both bathed in the morning in the center of his apartment that suddenly seemed far too small. She looked up at him, eyes bloodshot but alert. He set his jaw to keep his face still. The memory of the half-kiss burned.

“I guess I’ll see you in class?”

“Yeah. See you in class.”

She passed him and he caught that scent again: honeysuckle. His chest tightened further.

He heard the door open and shut behind him but it took him several moments to compose himself enough to move from where he was. After several deep breaths, he turned and saw the door securely closed. Normally he would lock it at this point, but something kept him from doing so. Maybe it was because he could hear her on the phone on the other side of the door. Maybe something was finally relaxing in him after the long months back. Whatever it was, he did not take time to question it.

He went to the bathroom and turned on the shower. He stripped and stepped into the stream before it had warmed. The ice cold stream sent a clarifying jolt through his system as if his blood was rebooting. Once he was drenched he cut the stream, soaped up, and then turned the water back on. The entire process took less than two minutes and was one of the few skills he was still glad remained from his military days.

He opened the shower door and grabbed his towel. After a brisk, efficient dry he hung it back on the rack and stepped out into his living space to fetch a change of clothes.

There she was: plugging his phone into his charger on the counter.

There he was: naked as the day was long in the middle of his room.

Their eyes met. She gave a funny high pitched squeak. His hands shot to cover vital bits while simultaneously lunging back towards the bathroom.

“Get out!” His voice was rough and loud.

“Sorry! Oh - I’m so sorry. Sorry! I didn’t mean - I’m sorry, sorry, sorry…!” The litany did not stop even after the door closed behind her again. He could hear her muffled apologies when he came back out and clicked the bolt.

He leaned forward, pressed his brow against the door, and sighed. What part of ‘leave the phone outside’ had she not understood?

Monday was going to be awkward as hell.

….

She was not at Psych on Monday, or Chem Lecture and Lab, or any of their other classes. He knew because he watched for her. He hated that he did that, but he did anyway.

His nose-ringed desk neighbor was there though smelling not-so-subtly of weed.

“Bro.” He said to Kristoff as he sat down. “You cool?”

Kristoff knew what he was asking and thought to be annoyed, but couldn’t muster the energy. He was watching for Anna Belle.

“Yeah, man. I’m cool.”

“Cool.” He let the conversation hang for a moment, then: “You wanna hang sometime?”

The invitation caught Kristoff off guard.

“What?”

“The compadres and I typically hang on the Westergaard Green. You should chill with us sometime.”

Kristoff looked at his desk neighbor. Today he wore a tie dye shirt with a peace sign on it to complement the mass of frizzy brown dreadlocks that fell in thick clumps to his mid-back. He looked like a poster child for everything the military frowned upon, and maybe that was exactly what Kristoff needed right now.

“What’s your name?”

“Bro, names are just words, but my friends call me Sven.”

“My friends call me Kristoff.” He said, or they would if he had any friends.

….

“Hey. Can I borrow your notes from Monday?”

She had not sneaked up on him. He’d seen her coming, but her words surprised him. It is Wednesday morning before their first class. She broke from the crowded sidewalk to join him in his walk in the wide grass median.

“I thought about asking someone else since - well - you know,” She blushed from head to toe and he was pretty sure he did, too. “But you’re the only one in all of my classes.”

It took her two strides to match one of his and he slowed his pace.

“Where were you Monday?” He didn’t have a right to ask, to know, but that did not stop him. She’d seen him naked and somehow that justified his line of questioning in his mind.

“Hans - that’s my boyfriend - Hans was pretty pissed about me skipping out on his party so I - uh - made it up to him on Monday.”

A new flush of color filled her cheeks and he knew better than to ask more questions.

“You can leave parties if you want.” He said instead. “If you want to leave, you should.”

She adjusted the straps of her backpack on her shoulders. “Yeah. I know. It’s complicated.”

Kristoff had seen enough of the world to know when something was complicated and when something wasn’t. He could not help but think this was not one of those things, but this girl and her messed up relationship was none of his concern. They reached Kai Hall and climbed the steps.

“So… the notes?”

“If you can make out my handwriting, they’re yours.”

….

The library was quiet which made sense as it was only the second week of the semester. They had their choice of tables which was probably why she gave him a weird look when he picked the one tucked away against the wall, but he was not about to explain himself. He sat where he could keep an eye on the door and press the back of his chair into the wall. She sat across from him.

He surrendered his notebook full of Monday’s notes and pulled out his Algebra homework. Normally the equations gave him no real difficulty, but today he could not focus on the letters and numbers to save his life because she was distracting him.

She was just copying his notes, but in the most annoying way possible. She kept tucking her tongue into her cheek, or biting her lip, or flipping her hair from one side to the other with a sigh. It was infuriating. She was infuriating.

He only made it through three problems (three!) when she closed his notebook with flourish.

“Done!” She looked at him with eyes so bright he could have sworn fire burned behind them. “What problem are you on? Algebra is kind of in my wheelhouse. You’re so lucky you have me a study buddy.”

….

He had no intention of ever studying with her again after that first catastrophic Wednesday where he could barely think the words ‘exponential decay’ much less solve equations involving it with her chattering. This was a library for Pete’s sake. You were supposed to be _quiet_ in a library. Anna Belle had not gotten the memo.

Somehow, however, he found himself right back at that table the next Wednesday, and the Wednesday after that, with her chattering away and his productivity in shambles at his feet. If that wasn’t bad enough, she said ‘hi’ to him in class now too - or waved from across the room. Just what was he supposed to do with that?

He’d saved her from one night of bad decisions and they studied together sometimes and she’d seen him naked. That did not make them friends. Did it?

One morning in Psych 101 when she smiled and said hello as she sat down in front of him Sven looked at him with a knowing smirk. Kristoff answered it with a swift shake of his head. He knew what Sven was inferring and nothing could be further from the truth.

They weren’t even friends so they definitely were not screwing. Plus - she had a boyfriend and he would have to be even crazier than he already was to tread on that terrain.

They were just two people who happened to be in all of the same classes and had one really bizarre night (of which they would never speak) together. That was all.  That was what the shake of his head said, or what he hoped it said.

From the look on Sven’s face it was safe to say he was not buying it.

….

He was going to the on-campus gym one Thursday morning, crossing Westergaard Green when he was nearly hit in the side of the head with a rogue frisbee. The disc came into his field of vision with just enough time for him to grab it out of the air but not with enough time for it to not send his entire system into overdrive. Before he could think - he chucked the frisbee as hard and as high in the air as he possibly could and then ducked and covered.

The explosion never came. It never would. Frisbees did not explode, but it was not until he felt someone shake his shoulder that he was able to snap out of the shell shock.

“Bro.” It was a familiar voice now. “You’re trippin’ again.”

Kristoff peeled his arms from his head to look up and see brown eyes, round like saucers, but unjudging. Sven extended a hand. Kristoff stared at it for a long moment, then took it.

Kristoff was not a small man. He stood taller than most and had a breadth he had earned through work and toil, but Sven was larger. Kristoff had not realized this while sitting next to him which was strange as he tended to profile everyone he saw into appropriate categories based on physical type and threat level, but somehow Sven had disarmed him. His easygoing manner, his transparent expressions, had caused Kristoff to underestimate the insane size of his classmate. Now, however, standing next to him on the green after being pulled to his feet - Kristoff could not deny that Sven (nose ring or not) was a monolith.

“You seen some weird shit, bro?” Was all Sven asked, but Kristoff saw the understanding in his eyes. Kristoff saw someone who had seen the world from the same side he had, and despite the incongruence of his appearance with anyone he would have considered having military experience Kristoff knew in that moment that they spoke the same language.

“Yeah. Some real weird shit.” Kristoff responded.

“I know it.” Sven said and then jerked his head in the direction of a group in the middle of the green. “Come meet my compadres. They know weird shit better than anyone else on this campus.”

And that was how Frisbee Thursdays started.

….

She started walking with him to class.

In a way she always had walked with him, just on the sidewalk, but now she found him in the grassy median and tried her best to match his stride.

“It’s weird that you walk out here.” She said the first time she walked with him in the middle of September. “You’re really weird.”

“Yeah.” Was all he said, hooking his thumbs beneath the straps of his backpack and noting its weight. The idea of her carrying the same weight on her own small back struck an odd chord with him. “You want me to carry that?”

The words were no sooner out of his mouth than he regretted them. It was a stupid thing to offer. She probably found it offensive, or patriarchal, or something. Women could carry their own packs. He’d known plenty of female soldiers who were worth two male and never would have offered them the same courtesy but he remembered just how small her shoulders had felt in his hands. He remembered the scalding heat of her fragile bones against his palms and he had to offer. He had to.

She looked up at him with a wide smile. “Are you offering to carry my books for me?”

When she put it that way it sounded so trite, so stupid. “No. I just - the textbooks are heavy.”

“You’re offering to carry my books for me.”

He bristled. “Well I’m not offering anymore.”

She tossed her head back and laughed. The shape of her throat took on the most excruciatingly beautiful arch. He coughed.

“Well that’s fine, but I wouldn’t mind if we slowed down a bit.” She tossed him a disarming grin. “Your legs are like super long.”

He let her set their pace from that moment on.

….

“Hey. I’m not going to be in class on Friday. Can we meet up before class on Monday so I can grab your notes?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“I’m going away with - you know - Hans. He’s being really insistent about it which kind of sucks because midterms are coming up and whatever but I should go, right?”

“He’s your boyfriend.”

“Yeah. He is. So I should go?”

A beat.

“I’ll take really good notes.”

Her smile almost makes it worth it.

….

It’s Frisbee Thursday, which always happened conveniently after Study Session Wednesday, and Kristoff could practically feel Sven’s questions before he asked.

“Stop it.” Kristoff said.

“Stop what?” Sven took a swig of water from his eco-friendly glass bottle.

“Looking at me like you know something I don’t.”

Sven laughed. “What if I do?”

“Doesn’t matter. Just stop looking at me like you do.”

Sven did not stop, not for the entire time they and Sven’s random bunch of compadres tossed the frisbee around.

“She’s got a guy. A boyfriend.” Kristoff informed and Sven looked unimpressed.

“You mean other than you?”

Kristoff balked. “You’re seeing things that aren’t there man.”

Sven’s smile cut a broad white streak across his dark face. “That makes me a visionary, bro.”

….

The weekend seemed extra long this time around. Classes on Friday dragged without her occasional interruptions and he found it difficult to find a place to land his gaze when it wasn’t entirely focused on avoiding hers. He had a paper due in History that he really should work on, but he has kind of forgotten how to study without her there forcing him to focus past her distractions.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and flipped it open. No missed texts. No missed calls. And why would there be? Only two people and two entities had this number and they all had things to do other than sit on their futon on a Friday night.

Kristoff looked over at Bruce on his gun safe. The small succulent stared back.

“I could go out.” He said to himself because he would not admit that he was talking to a plant. “Or I could stay here.”

He looked at his rack of clothes, his three pairs of shoes, and he was definitely not ready for a night on the town. He thought of Anna Belle and how she was out right now. She was probably having a great time with her Hans and their complicated relationship. She was ready for that kind of complication. He, however, was not ready for anything. Especially not Anna Belle.

The walls of his apartment started closing in as his chest tightened. He shot up off his futon like it scalded him.

“No.” He fought against the hammering of his heart. “You don’t get to beat me.”

He went to his bookshelf and pulled his notebook and pens out. There was a lot he could not control in this life. There was a lot he could not control in his own mind, but he could control just how and when Anna Belle got her notes and Monday and he did not think he could stand watching her copy what he’d written without going completely insane.

.….

He picked up an extra shift that weekend.

His job was a joke. He knew that. The VA told him it was a common transitional position they gave many veterans such as himself. All that meant to him was that they did not trust him to not screw up anything more serious than walking dogs and cleaning kennels at a local shelter, and in some ways he agreed with him but he would never say that.

It took him awhile to get the hang of it. He’d never had pets growing up, was not really sure what to do with all of the slobbering attention but he came to look forward to it.

The dogs never seemed to care what he had done in the past with his hands as long as in the present he was petting them. They never minded if he grew anxious when a car backfired or judged him when he needed to press his back against the wall of an alley till a suspicious party walked past them. They were all perfectly content to sit and wait with him till his heart came back to its regular rhythm, his mind cleared from its panicked fog.

The other staffers were patient with him as well. He was far from the first or the last veteran that had come through their door and they were thankful that he could handle their stronger breeds.

He often walked the larger dogs: the pits, the shepherds, the hounds, the mastiffs when they came in. There was one dog however that he looked forward to seeing above all others and that dog was Olaf.

At seven pounds, Olaf was one of the smallest dogs up for adoption. He was an explosion of white and black curly fluff that matted the second after it was brushed. No one knew for sure what kind of dog he was though there were some guesses, all anyone really knew was he was ugly.

He’d lost his front right leg and eye before he’d been put in the system. He had an underbite that left a fairly perpetual trail of drool trailing down his chin. His one remaining eye rather bulged from its socket as if it were frantically trying to do the work of both eyes, and oh how that eye lit up when Olaf recognized Kristoff.

….

Frisbee Thursday grew into Lift and Chill Sundays. It was never planned. Kristoff just showed up at the campus gym one Sunday to find Sven in the free weights. Sven offered to spot Kristoff’s bench presses and the rest was history.

One day after a particularly vigorous session Sven invited Kristoff over to his apartment. To both of their surprise, Kristoff agreed. It was a little further off campus that Kristoff’s situation, but similar in layout (except Sven had kept the doors on the closet and the bathroom). Kristoff saw the gun safe in the closet when he threw his hoodie in his clothes hamper.

“Whatchu want, bro?” Sven was at his fridge and Kristoff knew what he was asking.

“Got any pop?”

Sven grabbed two colas and handed one to Kristoff. “You working your steps?”

They both cracked open their fizzy beverages.

“No. Just don’t trust myself.” Kristoff said and Sven nodded.

“Lotsa guys feel that way.” Sven went over to his couch, sat, and reached for a small box sitting on the coffee table. “We all walk the same path but we all have our own way of dealing with it. Speaking of - you mind if I smoke?”

Kristoff shook his head even though he had trouble reconciling the idea of someone as strong and vital as Sven taking marijuana.

Sven opened the box to reveal a series of perfectly rolled blunts, lighter, and an ashtray. He pulled out one that was half burnt, brought it to his mouth, and lit. He sucked one deep breath, held it, exhaled and repeated.

He looked up at where Kristoff stood and smiled. His face already notably relaxed.

“You ever hit, bro?”

Kristoff shook his head.

“It ain’t for everyone, but it helps with the nerves a hell of a lot more than anything else I’ve ever tried.”

While Kristoff was fairly certain recreational drug use was not his path to peace, he envied Sven for finding his way to cope. He came and sat on the couch next to Sven as he took another long, satisfying drag.

“How long have you been back?” Kristoff asked, and that one question made him realize how little he knew about the man sitting next to him.

“Four years.” Sven said an smoke curled from his teeth. “You?”

“Eight months.”

“You sleeping?”

“Sometimes.”

Sven laughed. “I hear that.” He took another hit, then: “I didn’t sleep till I found this.” He held up his blunt. “This is the third time I’ve tried to go to college. Every other semester I dropped out in the first week. Lost jobs. Lost girls. My family thought they’d lost me, but it’s different now. I’ve got people. I’ve learned to deal. It takes time, but you get there.”

Kristoff had never envied someone the way he envied Sven in that moment.

“I saw stuff, Sven. I _did_ stuff and every time I let my guard down, every time I close my eyes, it is still there.”

Sven took another hit and leaned his head against the back of the couch. “Yeah. That never really goes away but you find a way to make peace with it or you let it eat you alive.”

Kristoff nodded. He knew Sven was right. He knew the stories of the men and women who were swallowed whole by the same monster that chased him. He did not want to be one of them. He was trying his damndest not to be, but he could still feel that terror creeping up on him.

Sven’s head stayed back on the couch, his wide eyes closed. Kristoff thought for a moment that the large man had fallen asleep and Kristoff would have had to slip out, but then Sven’s head rolled to the side and he looked Kristoff dead in the eyes.

“When you were serving - you had something worth dying for. Right?” Sven asked and Kristoff nodded. “Now you gotta find something worth living for. Ain’t nobody who can tell you what that is, but bro you gotta find it or else you’re stuck in the middle of the ocean without a raft and we both know how that ends.”

Kristoff’s mouth went dry. He took a long chug from his can. When he turned back to Sven he found him grinning like an idiot.

“What?” Kristoff dragged the back of his hand across his mouth.

“You ever watched Scrubs?”

….

It was an unspoken rule that Anna Belle and Kristoff did not speak of Hans. Ever.

They did not speak of really anything but school and classmates, but they absolutely did not ever speak of Hans. So when she came back from her long weekend and he handed her the packet of note he prepared without asking how her weekend was, she was not allowed to act surprised. He was also not allowed to comment on the fact that her eyes were puffy and there were dark circles beneath them.

It was easier, or at least it was less complicated, that way.

If he thought about it at all, however, he was never quite sure they were the same thing.

….

It started as a tickle in the back of his throat. Two days later it was a full-blown cold unlike anything he’d ever had. He woke the Thursday after fall break with a pounding headache, dry mouth, and raging sore throat. He could hardly muster enough voice to call in to work.

He pulled himself up from the futon only long enough to use the facilities, snag a spare roll of toilet paper, and pour himself the largest glass of water he could before heading back to his futon and collapsing.

….

It was late Friday afternoon when he was awoken by pounding on his door. He’d barely moved in thirty-six hours but he did not feel much better than when he had woken on Thursday. He groaned and put a pillow over his head. Whoever it was would have to come back when he felt semi-human.

Then he heard her: “Kristoff? Are you in there? Kristoff?”

He’d know that voice anywhere. Why was she here? She remembered where he lived?

He pulled the pillow off of his head and croaked, “What?”

“Are you - uh - okay? You weren’t in class today and you didn’t answer your phone?”

She wasn’t going away. He knew that much. He also knew there was no way he was going to have this conversation by shouting through a door when he had a screaming headache. So with a groan he stood, wrapped his comforter around his shoulders, and opened the door.

She looked so small and pretty standing there in his hallway. Her hair was up in a crazy knot on the top of her head, but more of it spilled out around the edges. She was in one of those oversized sweaters that only made her look smaller with the patterned leggings he liked because they had dogs on them. He hoped Olaf was not missing him too much.

Her little pink mouth pursed to a circle at his appearance, which he was sure was not good.

“You’re sick.”

He nodded.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

He shrugged. Why would he?

“Never mind. Are you okay? I mean I know you are not okay, but do you have everything you need?”

He did not even have the energy to try to explain anything to Anna. He just blinked at her, his body shaking. She reached a tiny hand up to his forehead. Her slim fingers were cool. They felt heavenly. He leaned into them.

“You’re burning up. Are you taking anything?” She stepped back and he shook his head. “Okay. You go lay down but leave the door unlocked. I’ll be back in twenty minutes. We have to get you well.”

….

He was just sick enough to listen to her. He went back to his futon, collapsed, and did not think of anything until she came back through his door. He was not sure if it had been ten minutes, twenty, or two hours. He didn’t really care because she was there and she was pretty.

She had two giant brown paper sacks with her, one on each hip, which she came and set on his kitchen counter. He watched her from where he lay flopped on his futon as she dug through the bags and pulled out a box of effervescent tablets. She opened a pack and brought it over to him. She dropped them in the remaining water at the bottom of his glass and stirred with her finger till they dissolved.

“Drink this.” She said and he was instantly transported back to that night when these roles were reversed.

He took the glass and obeyed.

Once he had drained the glass she took it from him.

“Now close your eyes and rest. I’m going to make some soup.”

….

When she said ‘make soup’ she really meant heat up a can of soup on his hotplate, but it was better than he had done for himself so he could not complain. It did make him miss his Ma’s chicken noodle soup, though. That stuff really did have healing powers, he was convinced. She would make him soup if she knew he was sick, but for her to know that she would have to know he was in the country.

Anna Belle poured the soup into one of his mugs and brought it over to him. He sat up and swung his feet to the floor. He took the steaming cup from her with a smile. The medicine was already kicking in making him feel slightly more human.

He watched as she went back to his counter and unloaded the rest of the contents of the bags. There were several more cans of soup, boxes of tissues, bottles of vitamins and pills, apples, and cough drops. She stacked the soup at at the back of the counter and lined the medicine up next to it. She stuck the apples in the refrigerator (but not before she grabbed one for herself) and came over to where he sat armed with a box of tissues.

“Here.” She tossed the box beside him. “You’re gonna want that.”

She looked around then taking in the space for what seemed the first time from Bruce to the doorless bathroom. All she said was: “I remembered it differently.”

If he’d been feeling better he may have made a quip about how this time she was sober, but as he was he could not think of a way to make it come out funny instead of cruel and he did not want to hurt her. He never wanted to hurt her.

“Yeah.” He said. “It is what it is.”

She took a bite of her apple and walked over to his bookshelf, taking in its contents. She pulled out the box set.

“You’ve never watched these.” She held it up for inspection. “Well there is no time like the present!”

And before he could object she had used the sharp of her thumbnail to break through the plastic casing and peeled it away. She cracked open the first season, popped out the first disc, and had it loaded into his thrift store DVD player before his soup had cooled enough to sip.

“You ever watched any of this show before?” She asked and he flashed to the two episodes he had sat through with a contact high next to Sven, but thought it best to not mention that.

“Not really.”

He coughed into his sleeve as she came and sat beside him on the futon.

“You shouldn’t stay.” He looked down at her as she curled her feet beneath herself and took a bite of her apple. “I’m going to get you sick.”

“Some people are worth getting sick for.” She said with a shrug and used the DVD remote to select ‘play all’.

….

He was not sure how many hours had passed since the last episode had played, but the menu had stopped looping and had gone to the blue sleep screen by the time he cracked his eyes open. His body felt heavy, thick, and slow. His head was stuffed with cotton, but his throat didn’t hurt anymore. He tried to shift positions when he found a dead weight attached to his right arm. He looked down and saw her.

The television screen was the only light in the room. Her cheek was smashed up against his arm, mouth gaping. Her top knot had come loose and her hair fell in crazy waves around her face and shoulders. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen which was exactly why he had to wake her right away and get her out of here.

He reached over with his free arm and gave her a gentle shake.

“Hey. Wake up.” His voice was low and gravely.

Her face scrunched and she squirmed away from his touch.

“Why?” She whined.

“It’s late. You gotta go home and sleep.” 

He wanted to brush his fingers across her sleep warm cheek. He wanted to kiss it. Sleep and sickness were quickly blurring the lines between what was appropriate and what wasn’t.

“It’s cold outside. Lemme stay here. I promise I’ll share the covers.” She pushed up off of his arm and rubbed at her eyes. “Please? I’ll be like a night nurse. I’ll even get you your medicine.”

As if to prove her point she got up and went to the mini-pharmacy she had stocked on his counter. He watched her in the strange blue darkness. He imagined the shape of her swaying as she walked beneath that oversized sweater.

Heat, and none of it sickness related, rose up in his gut. He wanted this. He wanted her, but he could not have her - not really - but he could have this. He could have her sleepy and sympathetic. He could have her in his bed just this once, close and cozy, and he knew it was wrong. He knew it was not what you did with someone else’s girl, but he’d given his sanity for the safety of her boyfriend and his countrymen so it did not seem too much to ask for one platonic night she wouldn’t even remember.

So when she came over to him with four pills in her palm and a refilled glass of water, he stood and folded the futon out to accommodate them both. He took the medicine and the water. She crawled into his bed and under the covers. When he climbed in after her she wrapped herself into him and he let her. He welcomed her and despite the fact that he was far too congested to smell anything he swore he smelled honeysuckle as he drifted off to sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

Sleep came to him as a heavy weight that dragged him down into a blissful, dreamless oblivion. It was a leisurely sleep that he was not rushed to leave. The combination of his body waging war against the sickness and the drugs he had taken did not hurt either. He slid through deeper levels of consciousness than he could ever remember visiting.

He certainly hadn’t slept this well since before his first deployment.

And while he still would never subscribe to kismet, or karma, or whatever the hell you called the balance of the universe he knew that there would be a balancing when he woke.

Perhaps that is why he fought that dreamy, hazy place between sleeping and waking so valiantly. The first brushes of it felt like feathers tickling their way into his mind.

First came discomfort.

His right arm was asleep, numb and tingling. His throat, while better, was dry. His head, while no longer aching, felt full and sloppy. He was covered in a thin sheen of sweat, but he was not too hot or too cold any more. Whatever fever that had held him had broken in the night and he knew when he woke he would be eager to wash the evidence of sickness from his skin.

Second came novelty.

He was acutely aware of the greater amount of space on his mattress. For efficiency sake he normally kept it in the couch position and slept in its curve, but that curve was gone. Instead, in its place, there were entirely different curves. These curves had weight and depth and _warmth_. He did not name the curve in his mind as he knew the moment he did this strange dream would be over but instead registered this other shape only as _It_.

Third came autonomy.

It moved on its own from him. It breathed and sighed into the curve of his neck. It had curled and threaded itself between his legs, into his arms, with startling efficiency. It was soft. It was small. It smelled distinctly of honeysuckle.

The moment that yanked him irrevocably from that strange between was when It gave a soft, unmistakeable nuzzle beneath his jaw.

The sensation of it, of it gentle and warm and trusting, was lightning bolts through his system. In so many situations he would have welcomed it, have embraced the chance to feel something like that again, but not this one. It was not his feeling to have. It was not his to hold.

Her lips grazed his pulse point and he could not roll away quickly enough.

It took a bit of effort to disentangle their limbs, the wrap of blankets and sheets around them, but he made quick work of it. He had to. It was either that or cross a line he knew he couldn’t. Not here, not now, not in the sane light of day that spilled in through his window.

He turned so he sat on the edge of the mattress. He could not bring himself to look at her, to address the confused look that had to be on her face because she should _not_ be confused as to why he pulled away. He should have not even had to pull away. She should have not been sleeping there in the first place.

Anger, red hot and explosive, boiled up in his chest.

He never should have let this happen. He never should have allowed that moment of weakness that had kept her close. Now there was damage. He had caused damage and that was his inheritance to her. Damage was all he would leave her.  

“I think you should go.” He croaked.

His water glass sat empty on the ground by his feet. He could go fill it, but he did not trust his legs to stand.

She shifted on the futon. He felt it, heard it, and it was killing him not to see it. He wanted to see it. He wanted to see the desolate wake of his thoughtlessness in the form of her sleep crumpled self.

“Oh.” She said and he could hear the surprise in her tone. He hated that surprise. She had no right to it. What had she thought would happen? There was nothing for them in the waking world. There was no safehold for the dreamscape they had built in lieu of reality.

He clenched his fists between his knees.

“I need to shower.”

“Yeah. Of course. I have to - I have stuff I have to do, too.” She said, but she did not move.

He could feel Bruce staring.

“Yeah. Okay.” He grabbed his glass. If he was going to have to endure any more of this, he may as well pass out trying to get a drink of water. “Thanks for the soup and stuff. I’ll see you Monday.”

He padded over to his kitchen sink. He could feel the hurt radiating from her every pore but he would not acknowledge it. He would not claim it. It was her hurt. He had his own to swallow.

He turned on the tap and kept it running until after he heard the door shut behind her.

….

After his shower he felt almost human.

Whatever hold the sickness had on him had loosened considerably and he felt fairly certain that after a cup of coffee and a little food he would be ready to face the day. He went to his little kitchen, absolutely not looking at the futon still spread flat from the night before, and pulled out his coffee maker. He measured, filled, and started the small pot.

He watched it drip.

Anything was better than turning around and seeing that bed.

He’d need to wash his bedding now. Not because she had been in it, but because of his fever. He had sweat through the sheets and he only had the one set. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he was not sure that he could stand smelling even the slightest trace of her when he tried to sleep.

Nope.

No how.

No way.

He was about to pour himself a cup when he heard three, sad, tentative knocks on his door.

He knew who it was without even checking the peephole. Only she could knock with so much personality.

He clenched his jaw. It had only been eight minutes since she’d left. He was tempted to pretend he was not home, but he was not going to hide. He’d done the right thing sending her on her way and he’d do it again now. He went to the door and cracked it open.

There she was.

He realized at that moment that he had not really gotten a good look at her that morning. He’d been in such a hurry to get her out the door that he’d entirely missed how rumpled and creased and adorable she looked. It made him want to scoop her up and throw her back under the covers. It made him want to join her there. It made him want.

“What’s up?” His arms crossed his chest

“I think I left my keys in there.” She was red from head to toe, from embarrassment or anger or the ability to read his thoughts he did not know. “Could I come in and look?”

He held the door open for her and she stepped inside. He had the thought to just leave his front door open until she left so she wouldn’t get any ideas about staying, but decided against it. He did, however, try to be as uninterested as possible as she searched his tiny apartment.

“Have you seen them anywhere?” She asked as she walked past him to look behind the cans on the counter.

He shook his head. “Nope.”

“Well - could you help me look?” She asked as got down on all fours to survey the ground.

He coughed into his sleeve and considered playing the sick card, but the sooner they found her keys the sooner she was out of there and the sooner he could have some peace and quiet to try and forget any of this ever happened. He did a quick scan of the room, trying to avoid looking at the bed, but that was difficult to do when it took up half of the space.

She was scouring the place on her hands and knees, red hair tangled and streaming around her shoulders, and he should help her. She had asked him to help her, but he couldn’t move. He stood there by the door stoic and stupid as she dove head first beneath his futon. He watched her wriggle her way under like a snake. The shake of her hips, the undulation of her thighs, was more than a little distracting.

She was almost completely lost beneath the mattress when he heard her victory cry.

“Ha! Found them.” She started wriggling back out, sweater riding up over her thighs, her butt - he looked away.

He didn’t see her pop out from underneath. He didn’t see that she had more than just her keys in her small hands. He didn’t dare look at her until she spoke.

“What are these?”

She held two flat metal ovals attached to a long chain between her fingers.. His heart seized in his chest. She ran her fingers over the inscription. He took two steps towards her in futile effort to stop her investigation.

“Bjorgman,  Kristoff J. O Neg. No preference.” She read before he had a chance to snatch them out of her hands. She looked up at him with wide, curious eyes. Her brow furrowed in disbelief. “Kristoff. Are these - uh - did you - when?”

He wanted to deny it. He wanted to tell her they were fake, but maybe it was better this way. This way she would know the truth about him and she could go. She could drift away and he would understand. There was no way she could understand what he had done, what he had seen. He wouldn’t want her to.

“I served five years.” Was all he said.

She looked back at the tags, then at him. “Were you - did you fight?”

“Yes.” He watched for her expression to change, to darken is disapproval, but it never did. It stayed open, watchful, curious.

“Did you ever get hurt?” Her voice quivered and his throat felt tight.

“A few times.”

“Where?”

It was like he was powerless against the question. His body moved without his prompting. He pulled up the leg of his pants to show the mangled scar wrapping his right calf.

“Shrapnel.” He watched her eyes move over the mutilated flesh. “A friend of mine tripped an IED and some of it caught me.” She reached out one hand like she wanted to trace the damage with soft, cool fingertips, and he dropped the leg of his pants and straightened. There was no way in hell - “It could have been a lot worse. I got off lucky.”

She looked up at his face, neck craning back to see his face from where she sat. “And your friend?”

He saw the hope in her eyes in the same place that he also saw the knowledge that the answer to that question was inherently unhopeful. His heart tightened. He wanted a different story to tell her. He didn’t want to tell her this, he didn’t want to tell her any of this, but he wouldn’t lie.

“He wasn’t so lucky.”

She pressed her lips together and nodded her head in understanding. Her hands clenched white knuckled fists around his dog tags. He could hear the apology in the air before she even spoke it. He could taste it, but he did not want it. He did not want her pity.

“It was war. People die in wars.” His voice had a bite to it, a challenge, but he didn’t know what he was daring her to do.

“Did you ever - Kristoff -” her eyes were so wide, so sad. “Did you have to kill people?”

Her question exploded in his chest as the room shrank around him. He remembered the fear in the eyes of the first man he’d shot at point blank range. He had not been trained for that. He had been trained to take out targets, hostiles, but no one had ever taught him that those he would kill might not want to die. He had done it anyway. He could still see each face.

It was difficult to breathe.

“I did.” He nodded and her face turned down towards where she clutched his dogtags in her lap with a sniffle.

Was she crying? He didn’t know what to do if she was crying. Was he so awful that he drove her to tears? Was she afraid of him? He did not know how to bear up under the idea that she may be afraid of him. He did not know how to bear up under any of this.

She met his gaze after a long pause, her eyes and cheeks wet.

“I can’t even imagine how horrible that must have been for you.” Her voice shook around each syllable and he felt those tremors run through him.

A realization broke loose in the internal earthquake she sent through him with her tears. She wasn’t crying from fear or anger or judgement, she was crying from pain - his pain. She was crying over pain she had never felt. She was crying for friends she had never lost. She was crying for memories she would never have.

He wanted to take it back. He wanted to stop her tears. He wanted to wrap her in himself and protect her from his pain but he could not. He could not protect her from it any more that he could protect himself.

He could not hold her. He could not comfort her. He did not know how to bear this pain. He could not show her how. He did not trust himself to not break her with his touch.

He stepped towards her and bent. He grabbed the chain of his dogtags, careful not to touch any part of her, and pulled them from her hands. He stood and cradled the metal in his palm. He could still feel the heat of where she had gripped them. He stepped back and slipped them into his pocket.

“Yeah. Well. They say ‘war is hell’ for a reason.” He watched as she stood, eyes still wet, and this was hell too.

“Were you ever going to tell me?” She looked at him as if his choice to keep the secret hurt more than the secret itself.

“It’s not something I thought you’d want to know.”

She looked at him with disbelief so complete that he felt like an idiot for ever saying those words, for ever thinking that thought.

“When are you going to figure out that I want to know everything about you.” She said, which was horrifying enough.

But then, as if to add insult to injury he found that he believed her and that terrified him. He needed something to do besides stand there and have her look at him like she cared or else he may do something really stupid. Like kiss her.

“Well,” he remembered his coffee, turned, and went back over to the counter. “Now you do.”

He took a mug from the sink and poured the dark liquid into it. It was steaming hot. He took a sip anyway and focused on the way it scalded all the way down. That still did not compare to the burning he felt in his chest every time he looked at her. He stared at the wall and tried to not hold his breath.

“Okay. Well.” He heard her jangle her keys, the confusion. “See you Monday.”

“Yep. See you Monday.” It was deja vu all over again.

He heard the door open and then close. He exhaled what felt like a thousand breaths and looked back out over his room. His gaze landed on Bruce. The small plant judged him in silence.

“Right.” Kristoff took another burning swallow. “Like you would have handled that any better.”

….

He went to work even though he was not completely up to snuff. Anything was better than being in that apartment that did nothing but remind him of all the ways he had failed on every level with Anna Belle. Olaf was waiting for him looking particularly matted.

“You’re never going to get adopted looking like that.” Kristoff muttered and grabbed a brush.

He went into Olaf’s kennel and braced himself for the inevitable affection. Between the licks and wiggles Kristoff managed to get a fair amount of the tangles out of his furry friend’s coat.

“There.” He patted the fluff on the top of his head. “Now you look downright respectable.”

Olaf smiled at him.

….

His advisor had signed him up for the spring semester of classes. When he had agreed to that arrangement the June before it had seemed like a no-brainer. The advisor knew what classes he wanted and since he was still in all of his core curriculum and none of his major coursework it was easy enough.

Still the registration email came a surprise.

It was stupid to get upset. He knew that. He didn’t know what he had expected. It wasn’t like he and Anna Belle were going to sit down and pick out all the same courses together again. It wasn’t like Sven and the compadres were going to always be available for Frisbee Thursday. It wasn’t like he should have expected things to stay the same in the strange, suspended bubble of reality that they had since August but he realized now that on some level he had expected just that.

It was the beginning of November but he was quickly realizing that this entire strange schedule he shared with Sven and Anna Belle would soon change. Everything would change. Everything was already changing and he knew he had to be ready for that but he wasn’t sure how.

….

She came up alongside him on Monday and walked with him to class in silence. She walked closer than normal, her sleeve brushing his, and all of his words caught in his throat. He wasn’t prepared for this. He would never be prepared for her.

He lived, he realized then, between the perpetual need for December to come and the eternal dread that it would. Each and every day he sat in class with Anna Belle and her red hair and her sassy mouth was a new kind of torture. He couldn’t tolerate her, couldn’t live without her.

He remembered the shape of her tucked into him that one stolen night. He had held the weight of her in his arms and he wanted - wanted - oh what did it matter what he wanted? She was unattainable. She was with Hans who was surely better for her in every respect. Kristoff knew enough of him to know he had money, had prestige, and he had Anna. and what could he offer her in return that could compete with that? An unstable future with no promise beyond him potentially breaking down at any second of every day into a pile of worthless human timebomb. That was what.

If she had to pick between a worthless piece of shit that could at least provide her with a stable income or a worthless piece of shit that could provide her with nothing - she may as well go with the money.

….

When they made it into Psych they split without a word.

Sven gave Kristoff an all knowing look.

“Nothing happened.” Kristoff muttered as he sat down.

Sven leaned in and kept his voice low. “Anybody ever tell you that you’re a shit liar?”

….

They were walking towards the library for Study Session Wednesday though they hadn’t spoken since she left his apartment that awkward Saturday.

His nose was still clogged, but he was better. The soup and medicine were still on his counter top. He should return those to her now that he didn’t need them anymore, but he didn’t want to. Somehow having that soup and that medicine was like having part of her with him when he went home each night.

“You know,” she spoke into their silence and he felt the rupture like an explosion of light in his mind. “You always call me ‘Anna Belle’ but you can just call me ‘Anna’. ‘Belle’ is my last name. You don’t have to say it.”

He knew this. He knew it was her first and last name, but that was how her notebook had introduced her to him and that was how he thought of her.

“What if I don’t want to?” He tried something as close to teasing as he ever had with her, feeling strangely giddy to be back on speaking terms, and she looked at him with an unexpected glint in her eye.

“Then I get to call you Christopher.”

“But that’s not my name. At least Anna Belle is your name.”

“That’s the rub when it comes to nicknames. They are kind of like friends.” She shrugged. “You don’t always get to pick them, Christopher.”

He felt a funny little piece break loose at that word. _Friend_. They were friends - or at least until the end of the semester they were friends. That was all they were. That was all they ever would be, and it was better that way for everyone.

He knew better than to get attached and yet here he was walking alongside a girl he could never have, tethered to her in a way he would never be able to understand.

He spent the rest of the evening trying to find a way to break the invisible bond that ran between them, but he never did.

….

Thursday Frisbee had a muted appeal that week. He enjoyed the opportunity to get out and move his body, but the weather was turning. The wind cut instead of caressed, the sun no longer wrapped them in warmth as it shone down on the green (which was turning rather brown). Everything was dying. Everything was ending. He felt that change within himself.

Sven noticed it too. After a particularly botched catch, he came over to where Kristoff stood bent at the waist with his hands on his knees.

“You chill, bro?” Sven didn’t touch him, knew not to.

With anyone else, Kristoff would have lied, but with Sven he just shook his head.

“No, bro. I am not chill.”

….

He was angry and getting angrier each time he realized how upset he was. He did not want to be upset. He did not want to care. All he wanted was to go to college, to try to make something of himself the way his Ma had always encouraged him to do.

He had done this for her and now he couldn’t even face her. He didn’t know if he ever could. Let her think he was overseas fighting. It was better that way.

Anna Belle had been unexpected. Sven had been equally, but uniquely, so. He hadn’t known he could get so attached. He hadn’t known that part of him still existed and now that he had found it he wished it had died back in the field. He was sick of loss. He was sick of people leaving and things changing and he didn’t know how to deal with this anymore. He never did in the first place.

That night when he was doing dishes in his sink he broke a plate. It was the plate he had served apple slices to drunk Anna months ago. The ceramic edges were sharp and he cut himself on accident fishing for them in the soapy water.

He would never know for certain if the break had been an accident or on purpose, but either way he knew that when he looked at the broken pieces stacked on his counter he somehow understood how they felt.

….

It was the second to last Lift and Chill Sunday before the semester ended except Kristoff had forgotten to bring the chill. Every muscle of his body shook by the time he collapsed on Sven’s couch, soda in hand.

Sven looked at him from across the room. A frown line etched in his broad forehead as he watched Kristoff chug his entire drink and then crush the can in his fist.

“You’re trippin’, bro.”

That was all Sven said. It was all he needed to. The words pulled the pin out of the grenade in his chest and let it loose all the anger that had building for weeks, months, years.

“I can’t keep doing this.” Kristoff said, squeezing the can even harder and he felt it cut into his palm. “Maybe I tried to transition back too quickly but I can’t keep pretending like I am like everyone else.”

“Then don’t.” Sven came over and extended a fresh soda towards him. Kristoff dropped the crushed can and took the new one with shaking hands. “Nobody gets to tell you how to be anything anymore, bro. You are up to you, now.”

Kristoff wanted to take the can and throw it against the wall and watch it explode. He wanted to rip open his own chest and squeeze his heart till it stopped beating. He wanted to do anything and everything he could to make this unstoppable ache disappear and Sven was not helping. He stood.

“Look. I gotta go.” He held the soda back towards Sven. “I’ll see you Monday.”

When Sven did not take the soda he did not wait for him to change his mind. He stepped past the hulking man. Or at least he tried to. Sven’s hand on his chest stopped him. Kristoff glared at him.

“What?” He challenged. He wasn’t sure, but he was pretty sure Sven could beat him in a fight. Something in his chest wanted to test that theory.

“Military is real good at telling people what to be, and how to be it.” Sven’s voice was fast and low, his big eyes more focused than Kristoff remembered seeing. “They take kids and make them parts of a machine which works just fine when they are it, but bro - we aren’t part of that machine anymore and once we aren’t they could give two shits about what happens to us.”

“So we’re just old parts. We don’t have a purpose.” Kristoff pushed Sven’s hand away, but does not leave. “We’re just some busted junk waiting for trash day.”

“No bro, no.” Sven came around in front of him. “You just gotta find a new machine to be a part of.”

In some regards Kristoff could appreciate Sven’s metaphor, but in most regards it just made him want to punch him in the face. Or maybe that was just what he wanted to do anyway. He’d felt punchy a lot as of late.

Kristoff snorted. “Yeah. Like your stoner machine?”

Sven did not even flinch. “Yeah I’m the guy who likes weed. I’m also the guy who likes frisbee and football and Latina girls, but I know that. I am good with that. I’ve made my peace. Who are you, bro?”

Kristoff clenched his jaw and Sven stepped back like he could sense that Kristoff was looking for a fight. Words had never worked so great for him, but his fists had never failed him. Sven knew that. Sven knew too much and it made Kristoff feel vulnerable and that was not a feeling Kristoff liked having. Kristoff hated how well Sven knew him, how easy it was for him to call him bluff.

Sven seemed to sense that Kristoff’s patience for this conversation was waning, so before it ended he threw in one last good verbal right-hook. “Be the guy who likes cars or the guy who likes pizza or the guy who likes those dancing shows on TV. Be whatever you want, but be something other than part of their machine, cuz when the night gets dark you are going to need something to remind yourself why you’re hanging on.”

Kristoff put the can of soda on the floor and walked out.

….

The next morning in Psych Sven gave Kristoff a heads up.

Kristoff ignored him.

….

“We need you to take Olaf for the holiday.” It was his boss, Oaken, from behind the front desk at the kennel. “We’re over max capacity for boarding and we need the space.”

Kristoff liked his boss. Oaken was easygoing, jovial, and fair (for the most part) but this was unexpected.

“I can’t just take Olaf.” The idea of being solely responsible for the animal’s well being made him sweat, plus he had finals to worry about. “I have stuff to do.”

“You’ve already said you aren’t traveling for the holidays.”

“Well - I’m not.”

“And that you plan to work your normal shifts?”

“Yeah, but -”

“We will provide his food, a bed, whatever you need and you will get paid time off to take him, okay? Go visit family. Take a road trip. Just take the mutt.” Oaken’s wide, moustached face twisted into a hopeful smile.

“This is highway robbery.”

“So you’ll do it?”

“Seriously. This has to be against some code.”

“All you have to do it sign here to authorize the foster arrangement and you know where the food is.”

“I should report you.”

Oaken made a worried face, but he was clearly unconcerned. “Oh no. That’s no good. I’m afraid I am going to have to kick you and the little mutt out until after Christmas.”

“You are a tyrant.” Kristoff reached for the clipboard and papers. “Where do I sign?”

….

He dumped the bag of food and supplies on the floor by the door and bent to remove Olaf’s leash. No sooner had he unclipped the metal fastening than Olaf bolted straight to his gunsafe and propped himself on his two back legs. His one remaining front leg barely made it to the top of the shelf, but he hooked onto it with tail wagging in pure delight.

“Bruce.” Kristoff said as he shrugged out of his coat. “Meet our new roommate, Olaf.”

….

Anna sat across from him at the table in the library, but she wasn’t studying her books. She was studying him. It was distracting.

He cast her an irritated glance. “What?”

She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms.

“You don’t have a corner on being damaged, you know.”

He frowned. “What?”

“Damage. You aren’t the only one who has it.’

“I know that.”

“Did you also know that while you carry it around like a shield it feels way more like a sword on this end?”

He didn’t have a reply for that.

She uncrossed her arms and flipped open her textbook. “Just think about that, will you?”

….

He brought Olaf to the last Frisbee Thursday and tied his leash to a tree.

“Damn he’s ugly.” Sven said.

“Yeah. Kinda like your mom.” Kristoff said and Sven hit his shoulder just enough to hurt but not enough to do any damage.

“Whatever, bro. Let’s throw.”

….

He wouldn’t say he was less angry, but he was used to functioning at this level of anger now. It thrummed around in his veins like a constant reminder that this was who he was now. He wasn’t the guy who liked pizza or the guy who liked cars. He was the guy who was angry about everything. He was the guy who hated everyone and everything, but even that wasn’t entire true because he didn’t hate _her._

No. He didn’t hate her at all and he wondered just at what point he became the guy who was hopelessly in love with her and just what exactly he should do with that.

….

She was waiting outside of their Chem Lecture and Lab class after they completed their final. It was their last final before break and she had finished before he had, but she had waited. She’d never waited for him after a test, and she always finished before he did. He knew, however, this was different.

She knew it, too.

“How’d you do?” She held onto the straps of her backpack like they were lifelines.

“Probably not as well as you.”

She laughed. He loved that sound.

“I’m sure you did great.”

He shrugged.

“So I guess this is it.” She fiddled with her straps. “Our twin schedule weirdness is finally at an end.”

He stuffed his hands in his pockets, uncertain what to do with her acknowledging the same thing that had been plaguing him for a month.

“Yeah. I guess so.”

She smiled. “It’s been fun!”

He had to smile in return. “Yeah. It’s been something.”

He rocked onto his toes and she looked behind her as another finisher exited the classroom.

“So I’ve never asked you what you’re doing for break?” She asked, trying to prolong what he  already knew was a dying conversation.

“Staying around here. You?”

She shrugged. “I have a trip with my boyfriend, but I’ll be back on Christmas eve to see my sister.”

The mention of Hans, though oblique, tainted the conversation and left a bitter taste in his mouth. Kristoff had hated a lot of people in his short life, but no one near as much as he hated this Hans.

He thought of shields. He thought of swords.   

“That sounds nice.” He tried to make it sound genuine, but there was a bite to his voice.

“Are you seeing family for the holidays at least?” She changed the subject, as uncomfortable with it as he was.

He shook his head. “Nah.”

“Are they too far?”

“No, they aren’t too far. Just up in Geyser Springs,” He said.

“Then you should just drive up.” She said. “No one should be alone at Christmastime.”

“Yeah…” He agreed, but he did not know how to tell her that sometimes the most crowded room could feel the emptiest. “But I don’t have a car and I don’t want anyone to feel like they have to drive all the way down to get me so I’m just staying here. It is fine. I’ve got Olaf and I’m going to carry him on some long walks so it will be fine.”

She looked at him then, really looked at him, not with her usual frenetic energy but with a calculated stillness that left him uncomfortable.   
“You haven’t told them.” She said as realization swept her every feature. “Kristoff. Your family doesn’t know you’re back, do they?”

He felt his ears catch on fire with guilt, but also indignation. Who was she to judge him? She had never known him before. She hadn’t ever met his family. She could not know what it would mean for him to go home, to face them knowing what he had done. They were the salt of the earth and he - well - wasn’t. He was the guy who was a total mess.

“Christopher.” She said, head tilted to the side. “You have to go home.”

And he knew she was right. The longer he stayed away the worse it would be to return, the less understanding anyone would be, but the idea still terrified him.

“Yeah. Well. I still don’t have a car.”

A light sparked in her eyes.

“I don’t leave till tomorrow.” She said as a smile split her face. “Go home and pack. I’ll pick you up in half an hour.”

….

His nerves grew with each ticking mile on the odometer. It was just over an hour drive from campus to his parent’s home, but it felt longer.The darkening world whizzed by the window, all of it so familiar, but it seemed to stretch and grow into entire continents.

Anna seemed to pick up on his edginess and kept her foot on the gas. She turned the radio up and chattered about the previous semester to fill the tense air. Olaf dozed contentedly on Kristoff’s lap.

He did not want to do this. He did not want to go, but somehow when Anna had suggested it he just couldn’t turn her down. He had jumped at the chance to spend more time with her, a few more stolen moments before everything changed.

He looked at her as she sat beside him. He watched how her hands moved on and off the wheel when she talked and how she took her eyes off the road far too much to be considered safe. He watched the way her hair moved and her lips moved and the shape her tongue made curling around different sounds. She sang in the car, belting along to some of her favorite songs, and he liked her voice. It was melodic and soothing and he wondered what it would be like to hear her sing a lullaby.

He watched as passing streetlamps and oncoming traffic illuminated her eyes, caught the broad lines of her cheekbones, and he smiled. She was beautiful to him - so bright and alive - and in that moment he knew he would never stop loving her. He would never stop being the guy that was in love with her. That was who he was and he knew that this would be his last chance to do anything about it.  

….

It was a modest home styled to look like a log cabin tucked into the the craggy hills of the western mountains surrounding Arendelle. It had a large wrap-around deck that was already strung with Christmas lights and a long driveway lined with evergreens. It had been five years since he had seen any of it and the trees had grown in that time. The shutters were painted a new, vibrant forest green and the basketball backboard mounted above the garage had finally lost its net.

Anna parked behind his pa’s old truck and looked at him.

“You ready?”

He nodded ‘yes’, but meant ‘no’.

“You can do this. You’re the strongest person I know.” She said and he gave her a grim smile.

“You’ve got to get better friends.”

“I don’t need better friends. I’ve got you.”

She reached across the console and put her hand just above his knee. His mouth went dry. His eyes shot down to where her hand lay. It looked so small and pale against the dark denim and he wondered if she had any idea the affect that her smallest touch had on him.

He thought of returning her touch, of putting his hand on top of hers. He thought of turning in his seat and tasting her mouth. He thought of a lot of things. He did not do any of them. He couldn’t. The idea of touching her with his hands that had done so much evil, had broken so many lives, made him cringe.

How could he ever consider a girl like her being interested in a guy like him?

The car shrunk around him. It was too small, too hot, and the pressure was crushing him. He had to get out. He had to get out _now_.

He popped off his safety belt and opened the door. Olaf jumped out ahead of him.

The air was crisp and cold against his skin. He took a deep breath and then another and closed his eyes.

There was no snow yet, but there would be soon. He could smell it. He could smell the wood smoke from the fireplace his Pa had built his Ma. He could smell honeysuckle, but he knew that was not his mother’s bush. It wasn’t the right season for that.

It was her. She had come around the car and stood beside him, brow knitted with worry.

“Did I upset you? I didn’t mean to upset you, but I did. Didn’t I? I did that thing my sister is always telling me not to. _Don’t push, Anna_. She always says that because I always push. I always try to get people to do things they aren’t ready to do.”

“No.” He tried to calm his pounding heart. “It wasn’t you.” He clenched his fists at his side and exhaled.

She touched his sleeve and he couldn’t take it. He paced forward a few steps and then turned to face her. She watched him with eyes that said she was certain she had hurt him, like she had done something wrong, like she had done anything other than be wonderful. He couldn’t let her think that.

So he said: “Sometimes I freak out.”

The words hung between them as Olaf sniffed the ground by his feet. Her expression shifted to something much more quizzical.

“What?” Her hands grabbed her hips and he scrambled to explain.

“Sometimes I’ll hear something or see something or _think_ something and it is like I’m still fighting.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “And then I freak out.”

Understanding dawned on her face. “Like right now.” She said and he nodded. “And the pencil thing.”

He let out a choked laugh because he knew she was not mentioning the night they had shared a bed on purpose.

“Yeah. Like the pencil thing.”

“Are you still freaking out now?”

He looked at her, at the house, and thought of the moments to come - the moments that had come before.

“Yeah. A little.”

She stepped towards him as if to hug him and he jumped out of reach. They had never hugged before and he knew that if they started now he would never let her go. She blinked, bewildered at his evasion. A motion-activated flood light cast a hard light on her soft face.

He felt sweat on the back of his neck. “Sometimes touching makes it worse.”

She held her hands up in mock surrender and made a face. “Got it. No touchy the Christopher.”

He was going to think of something else to say. He was going to be clever and charm her and make himself seem at least somewhat appealing instead of a total basket case but they were interrupted by a stout man with skin like chocolate. His hair was whiter than the last time Kristoff has seen it, but his skin looked as smooth as ever. The older man waved a flashlight in hand.

“You kids lost?” The light shone on Anna first, Kristoff’s back was to him but he would know that voice anywhere.

His eyes went to Anna’s, wide and afraid. She gave him a small smile and he knew it was time. He turned and met the eyes of the man that raised him.

‘No Pa. I think I’m just where I need to be.”

….

Joyous was an understatement to the reception that he received at that old house. After the initial surprise of his arrival his ma had dissolved into tears and then into her usual course of action of trying to stuff him with food. No one asked him why he had stayed away. No one judged him for needing time. They were all just happy to see him.

Ma had gotten on the phone the moment she had composed herself and called the entire family. They had all arrived within the hour with an assortment of sides and sweet and general merriment. There were so many of them now. He had missed so many weddings and births he felt like he would never catch up on names and news but then he looked at Anna and saw her laughing under the tree with one of his three young nephews and Olaf and his heart swelled.

He hadn’t known his heart could do that, but it did. She had never once asked about why he wasn’t the same as the rest of his family. He was sure she had put it together that this family had chose him not by birth, but by fate, but it wasn’t the kind of not asking that hung in the air. It was the kind of not asking that existed because she really didn’t see a reason to ask. Anna just loved people as they were, not as she wanted them to be and somehow that made his heart swell even more.

So when his Ma came over, nudged him with her elbow, and said: “So this Anna, she’s pretty special, huh?”

All Kristoff could say was: “Yeah. She is.”

….

She had to go back to Arendelle. He knew she did. She had only given him a ride to insure that he would spend the holiday with family, but he wanted her to stay. He wanted her, but he didn’t know how to do that.

He excused himself from his family to walk her back out to her car. It had started snowing as the evening had progressed. The world was dusted with the first flakes of the season and it made the world seem more magical somehow, more hopeful

He hadn’t felt that kind of hope in a long time and he didn’t think it had anything to do with the snow. It had to do with her.

His various relations had been careful to not park behind her as they knew each other's’ vehicles and who to block in, but she was not one of them. She was new, she was different, but Kristoff didn’t want her to be. He wanted to her to be known. He wanted her to have her own parking pecking order place. He wanted her to be part of his big crazy family. He wanted her to be his.

“Thanks for driving me up here.” Kristoff said as they stood outside of her car. He kicked his toe in the fine layer of powder.

“Of course.” She said with a smile that lit up the night. “Christmas is about spending time with the people you love.”

He knew that, but it sounded so different coming from her.

“Yeah, but I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.” He said and he didn’t just mean Geyser Springs. “So thanks.”

She stepped forward, stood on her toes, and brushed a soft kiss on his cheek. His breath caught on the sweetness of the gesture, his entire body going rigid.

“Merry Christmas, Kristoff.” She said as she pulled back.

She looked at his frozen stance, eyes growing worried. “Oh. Sorry. No touching. Right. Shoot. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have -” She dug for her keys in her purse.

Before he could stop himself, he reached out and grabbed her elbow. His grip was gentle but it rendered her paralyzed.

She looked at him. His gaze traveled from her eyes, to her mouth, then back to her eyes and he knew this was it. There were no more chances. If he was the guy who was in love with Anna, if that was who he wanted to be, then this was it.

“Why did you bring me up here?” He asked and she looked up at him. Her face was shadowed strangely from the porch lights, the flood light, and snow fluttered around her. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

“I told you,” her voice held the barest quaver. “No one should be alone at the holidays.”

“That’s not it.” Kristoff said and this was war. He was fighting every instinct within himself to stop while he was ahead so they could brush this aside like all of their other awkward moments, but he wouldn’t. Not this time.

“Kristoff….”

She looked back down at her purse but made no moves to find her keys, to get away from him, but he felt her slipping away. She was standing right here but she was leaving him. Urgency bubbled up in his chest.

“I need to know what you want to be, Anna.” He on a burst of air. The pronouncement hung between them and it was his turn to fill the silence.

Her eyes came back to his full of questions. “What does that even mean?”

“It means - I don’t know. It means - well - it means that for the first time in forever I know what I want to be.” His free hand rubbed the back of his neck as he tried to wrestle all of his swirling thoughts into something that made sense. “I want to be more than friends. I want to be the one you spend Christmas with because you love me the way I think I love you. So I need you to tell me what you want. Make it clear. I can take it, whatever it is, I can take it - but I can’t just stand here knowing that I want you for another second unless I know what you want, too.”

Snow fluttered around her face, stuck to her hair, the shoulders of her jacket. She was shivering, he assumed from the cold, but she was flushed. The thin skin of her neck, her cheeks, her ears was red.

She looked at him like he had gone crazy and maybe he had. This was driving him crazy. She was driving him crazy. Her eyes were so wide, pupils blown out in the dim light of the driveway, and it was killing him.

He couldn’t stand here anymore.

“Anna. You gotta say something or you gotta get in your car and drive away because if you don’t,” he could feel his entire body trembling in anticipation. “If you don’t I am going to kiss you.”

She gave a little gasp and it was like punch to the gut, but she didn’t move. She stayed there in front of him in the glow of the porchlight, and blinked as snow fell in her eyes.

“That’s what I want.” She said, voice quivering.  “I want that.”

She did not have to say it twice.

He grabbed her waist as he stepped into her, his other hand coming alongside her face to steady her, and covered her mouth with his. He hadn’t realized how many times he had imagined this since that night she’d been drunk in his apartment. He hadn’t known how many times his subconscious had entertained just how the shape of her would fit against him. All of his imaginings, his expectations, were shattered in the face of reality. It was more than anything he could have ever dreamt. She was more.

Her mouth moved under his, sweet and willing, and he forgot how to breathe. He forgot how to think. He forgot how to do anything but swallow her whole.

He hooked his arm around back and pulled her up against him, lifting her to her toes. Her hands slid up his chest, around his neck, and held onto him for balance. He felt the swell of her breasts press tighter to the wall of his chest with each uneven breath. He felt the tension in her spine as she arched into him. She was all he felt. She was his all.

He pulled away on a groan not because he did not want more of her but because he wanted too much. He wanted all of her but this was not the time, not the place.

“I want you to stay. I want you to stay here with me.” Kristoff pressed his forehead against hers. “We don’t have to figure it all out right now but all I know is I want you to stay.”

He felt her clouded breath hitting his cheek and he wanted to look at her but he didn’t trust himself to not fall back into her. Whatever thread of control that had held him away from her had been burned away entirely. He was hers.

“Kristoff.” She said on a breath and pushed at his chest. He released her slowly, stepping back and letting his hands fall away until he stood before her utterly exposed.

She looked up at him. Behind her eyes was an ocean, dark and deep and fathomless. He wanted to drown in it.

“Kristoff I - I can’t stay.” She said it was a sucker punch to the gut.

‘Why - why not?” The world fell out from beneath his feet and he staggered back a step.

“I have to -” she turned back to her purse to search for her keys and he was hemorrhaging. “I have to - oh - I have to -”

She pulled out the jangling set and he watched her with a pit growing where his stomach used to be. She unlocked her car, opened the door, and got inside. He stood there and watched, each part of him turning to ice. He didn’t have any words left.  She started the engine and rolled down the window. Her cheeks were still flushed from the cold, from the kiss that would haunt him until he died.

“I have to go. I’m sorry. I just - I have to go. I have to -” she shook her head. “Just trust me okay? This is what I want.”

And with that she rolled up her window and drove away.

….

He stood outside for a long time watching the end of the driveway, willing her to come back, but she never did. He did not come back inside until his Ma came out to find him with a blanket and cup of hot cocoa.

“Come inside before you freeze to death.” She said, barely tall enough to wrap the blanket around his broad shoulders, and he wished he could have.

It would have been less painful.

….

He was the guy with a broken heart.

He hadn’t know he had enough heart to break, but apparently he did. Luckily with the hubbub of the holidays and the large size of his family he was never alone for long to wallow in his heartache. There were carols to be sung, and cookies to be made and frosted and taken to neighbors, and yule logs to be chopped. It was good to be surrounded with all of this and he knew he was also the guy with the crazy wonderful family.

If he was also going to be the guy with a broken heart, guy with the crazy wonderful family was not a bad alternate title.

….

It was at breakfast three mornings after Anna left  that the conversation happened. Kristoff had just come in from walking Olaf through the snow and was frozen. Ma had a cup of coffee waiting on the table for him along with his favorite pancakes with chocolate chips baked into a smiley face.

“Don’t you think I’m a little old for smiley pancakes?” He said even as he grinned to see it.

“You’ll always be my baby.” Ma said from her place at the kitchen sink where she watered Bruce. The response was familiar. He’d heard it since childhood.

She came and sat at the table with her own cup of coffee and looked at him with a warmth only a mother can.

“What?” He said around a mouthful of pancakes. “Do I have food on my face?”

Ma smiled. “Baby. If she can’t see how wonderful you are, then she doesn’t deserve you.”

He nearly choked on his pancake. He grabbed his coffee and washed down the bite around a cough.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Ma just kept smiling her knowing smile. “Of course you don’t, but if she wasn’t ready for a little bit of a fixer upper then someone else will be. You’ve got good bones, Kristoff. Someone is going to see that and love you for it.”

He looked down at his pancakes, appetite severely diminished, and frowned. “Wait. Did you just call me a ‘fixer upper’?”

Ma just laughed and stood up from the table. She grabbed her coffee.

“Baby we are all fixer uppers. We just gotta find that one person who can envision us at our best without trying.”  

….

It had to be better this way. That was the only thing he could tell himself as he lay in his childhood bed unable to sleep. It had to be better that she had left. He wasn’t ready for her. She wasn’t ready for him. Something. Anything.

 _This is what I want._ She had said. She had wanted to leave him and he had to respect that. He had to. He’d turned off his phone the moment she had pulled out of the driveway and now it lived at  the bottom of his bag. He would not check it until he went back to school. He couldn’t. He may call her, or text her or something embarrassing and he had already embarrassed himself enough.

He was the guy with a broken heart, but he was also the guy with some, albeit very little, self respect. He was not the guy who called girls at 3AM and begged.

Thought right then, laying in that bed unable to sleep, he wished he was.

He breathed deeply to keep the panic at bay.

….

It was Christmas Eve, one week after the night Anna left, and all the family was gathered in the living room for eggnog and the annual reading of _A Christmas Carol_. His adopted brothers and sisters, their spouses, and all of the children were draped over one another on every available seat of furniture and spilled over onto the floor. Olaf sat cozy on Ma’s lap. Kristoff stood with his shoulder rammed into the doorjamb of the room, hands stuffed in his pockets.

That was why he was the one to hear the soft knock at the door. That was why he was the one to signal to Ma to stay put next to Pa and he would get it.

He went into the foyer and opened the door.

“Hi.” It was Anna. “Can I come in?”

He’d lived this moment in his head ten thousand time in the last week. What would he do if she came back? How would he respond? His fantasies ranged from dramatic, to cruel, to romantic - but none of them had prepared him for the wave of dumbfounded shock that crushed him the moment he saw her.

He shook his head, trying to restart his system, and there was no way in hell she was coming inside with his whole family sitting there. He reached for the coat rack by the door and grabbed the first thing he got his hands on. He swung it over his shoulders (thankfully it fit), stepped out onto the porch, and shut the door.

His mind raced. “Wh - what are you doing here?”

He wanted to shake her till her teeth rattled. He wanted to squeeze her till her eyes popped out. He wanted to kiss her till she forgot her name.

“I’m here for Christmas.” She said like he should have expected this, like she was confused at his confusion.

“But you left.” He said, anger still sharp from that pain. “I asked you to stay and you left. You _left_.”

“I know.” Her face fell in remorse. “I handled that badly. I just - I was overwhelmed. I was the one that freaked out this time, okay? I had to - I was supposed to go on a trip the next day with Hans but my suitcase was back at my dorm. I couldn’t just stay I had to - I had to go but I wanted to be with you. I told you that.”

“No. You got in a car and said _‘this is what I want’_.”

“ _This_!” Anna gestured emphatically between them. “You and me and _this_ is what I want. That is what I meant when I said that and if you had answered your darn phone you might have known that. You might have also known I was driving up here.” She put her hands on her hips. “I didn’t even know if you were still here but you weren’t answering at your apartment so I drove up anyway. Do you know how embarrassing it would have been if you weren’t here?”

“Yeah. I have an idea.”

They stared at each other for several breaths, trying to cool their tempers.

Then he said: “You called?”

“Yeah. Every day. I even called you from the road after I left to try to explain or at least talk but it went straight to voicemail.”

“I turned off my phone.”

“And you didn’t turn it back on?

“No.”

“Well that was stupid.”

He grinned, caught off guard by her bluntness and by the growing realization that she was here - that she had chosen him.

“Yeah. It was.” There was just one more thing. “And Hans…?”

“He didn’t take the news well which was one of the reasons it took me so long to get back up here, but we’re done. It’s over. I want to be with you.”

He looked at her then - really looked at her - and it was like he was seeing her for the first time all over again. He was seeing her and she was his. She wanted to be his. She had driven up here because she had wanted to spend Christmas with him. All of the hurt and rejection melted in the wake of realizing that she wanted him.

He saw movement out of the corner of his eye and saw family members peeking through the window. “We’ve got an audience.”

Anna waved.

“We could just go inside - “

“No. We can’t.”

“Kristoff - “

“No we can’t because I am going to kiss you in a way that I don’t want to have to explain to my nieces and nephews later so will you just stop fighting with me and just come over here.”

He grabbed her elbow, the first time he had touched her since she had left, and he knew he would never let her go again. He took her down the porch. The snow crunched beneath their shoes as he led around to the side of the garage where there were no windows for prying eyes.

Once he was sure they were out of sight he turned to her to find her already stepping in towards him.

“So the no touching thing,” she said as she wrapped her arms around him. “Is that rule gone now?”

He chuckled, but then turned serious. “I am damaged goods. I have more issues than I can count. You sure you want to take me on?”

“Everybody is damaged goods.” She squeezed him, pressing her cheek against his chest and he had never imagined it could feel so good just to be held.

“Yeah. I know you say that, but I’m the real deal. I’m the kind of damaged they write books about.”

“I love to read.” She looked up at his face. “I was promised kissing if I came over here with you, not horror stories.”

He couldn’t help but smile at her. “I just want to be honest with you. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I don’t want to hurt you either.”

He cupped her jaw in his hands. “Tell me what you do want.”

“I want this. I want you.” She lifted her chin.

He kissed her then because after all he was a guy who was in love with a girl and that was a good a thing to be as any.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all she wrote, folks! I hope you enjoyed.


End file.
